CHICAGO, March, 27, 2026 - Leisa Bryant rarely knows the emotional state of someone ordering a meal from the foodservices of University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
“We’re a cancer hospital,” explains the executive director of the hospital’s Food and Nutrition Services.
“We don’t know what kind of news someone we’re feeding may have just gotten. Maybe a loved one of theirs has just passed, or someone in the family has been diagnosed with cancer. Or they’ve just been told they’re cancer-free and are waiting to go home.”
All she knows is her department strives for more than merely delivering calories, be it to patients, their visitors, or members of the hospital staff.
“We’re not only providing the food, we are providing care, we are providing hospitality,” Bryant says with a slight Caribbean accent. “The staff understands that vision and that the role they’re playing makes a difference. That’s really the passion I have.”
It’s the drive that earned her the Silver Plate award from IFMA The Food Away from Home Association in the healthcare category.
In her 20 years as a foodservice director and dietician, Bryant has taken bold steps to bolster the care and comfort of her three key constituencies. The moves have often drawn simultaneous high-fives from the accounting department because she’s managed to cut costs at the same time.
After joining the facility in 2017, Bryant combined what were three siloed operations—Room Services, Clinical Nutrition Programs, and a network of retail outlets managed by contractors—into a single operation promising more agility and efficiency.
Revenues jumped 12% after the organizational and operational overhauls were put in place. And that’s with a five-person reduction in staffing.
The remaining employees appreciated how their world had changed. Staff turnover dropped below 10%, and now “we have people waiting to join our department,” says Bryant.
“We transitioned to what’s called compassionate leadership,” she says. “I meet every employee who is brought into the department. I share with them what our team does.”
Staff development has been an area of focus for the clinical registered dietician. Among the options she’s introduced is a formal 40-hour leadership training program for junior and midlevel employees who’ve shown an aptitude for management.
Her department tweaked job descriptions and its reporting structure to provide a clear career path for everyone.
Bryant also smashed a glass educational ceiling—the degree requirement of upper-level positions—by giving weight to what employees have learned on the job. “If you have experience, we can make that work,” says Bryant.
She was the in-house champion of a paid internship program created in collaboration with the vocational-training service TexasWorks. Five young hires have completed the program. Four of the five opted to remain with the hospital, moving into higher positions. The fifth was recruited by another healthcare provider.
The staff has also shown appreciation for management’s encouragement of community givebacks. Bryant started asking staff members to come to meetings with any food item they cared to donate, be it a loaf of bread or a can of beans. They gathered the goods into baskets and gave them away.
On a broader scale, MD Anderson began donating excess food prepared during the pandemic to the underprivileged. The program has persisted, with about 4,000 pounds provided annually to charities.
Bryant says she usually gets buy-in these days from her hospital’s administrators because she’s been able to show a direct return from moves she’s championed. The publicity and connections generated by the food giveaways, for instance, have led to an increase in applications for hospital jobs.
Allowing patients’ visitors to access the center’s room service program via QR code improved the P&L by $45,000.
Bigger impact came from Bryant’s recommendation that sanitation services contracted from outside parties be brought inhouse. The move slashed hospital expenses by $200,000.
Bryant says the latitude to do more for patients, visitors, and staff than serve outstanding food is why she relishes working for MD Anderson. But she admits that one aspect of the job—and presumably any job in healthcare foodservice, for that matter—is still a frustration: People still blanch at the thought of hospital food, no matter how off-target that preconception might be today.
“My hope is that people will no longer think of it as Jello with green beans from a No. 10 can and some mashed potatoes,” she says. “My dream is that consumers will someday be making reservations for cafes that happen to be within a healthcare facility.”
As Managing Editor for IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, Romeo is responsible for generating the group's news and feature content. He brings more than 40 years of experience in covering restaurants to the position.