Celebrating Our People – Meet Andrew Shoemaker

It’s been a long time since Andrew Shoemaker was a child learning how to cook in his grandmother’s Owensboro kitchen. But he keeps  those memories close in the present, as he manages cafeteria staff and works with a dietician as the Food and Nutrition Services Supervisor at Saint Joseph Berea.

“My grandmother raised me when I was a kid,” he said. “She would teach me how to make homemade biscuits and gravy and how to fry chicken and how to make candy. These are recipes I still make today. Sometimes I even make them for our patients and for our hospital.”

Despite those early lessons, Shoemaker didn’t start out wanting a food service career. 

From Music to Meals

As a student at Eastern Kentucky University, he planned to be a music teacher and performer. “Then I found out it wasn’t working for a lot of my colleagues and they weren’t satisfied with the industry they were going into,” he said.

Friends in the university’s nursing program told him he had the personality to go into health care, but after a couple of nursing classes, he opted to leave college and go to work. With prior restaurant experience, he landed a position as a cook for a Berea nursing home. In a few years, he oversaw  food services at several long-term care facilities, while obtaining certification in dietary management. But after 11 years, Shoemaker was looking for a career change. When the job opened at Saint Joseph Berea in January 2023, he said, “It just seemed like a really good opportunity.”

Moving from long-term to acute care wasn’t a dramatic change, he said. “It was really easy for me. Berea Hospital has some of the most friendly people I’ve ever worked with in health care. I enjoy all my co-workers,” he said.

Beyond the Plate

In his work, Shoemaker manages nutritional requirements, the need for variety and patient food preferences. Communication is key, he said: “We walk in the room and we talk to them and we let them know right up front what we have to offer and how we can meet their needs. I ask people what types of foods make them happy, what types of foods they enjoy.”

Sometimes patients compare the hospital’s offerings to Cracker Barrel — "which in Kentucky, that can be a high compliment, or they’ll say our food does taste like their mother’s food,” Shoemaker said. In fact, some of the hospital’s dishes have even prompted a shoutout on local social media. He responded by posting the recipe for the chicken marsala that was praised.

Nourishing Minds and Community

“In your hospital, you’re taking care of the community,” Shoemaker said. “Having the guests leave with a positive impression of the hospital and for them to go out into the community and say ‘I had a meal at the hospital and the food was actually good’ is a good thing.” Some former patients even return to eat regularly at the hospital café.

Education is Showmaker’s  favorite part of the job, echoing back to his former plans to teach music. 

“We offer diet education, we offer education for heart-healthy diets, for diabetic diets. I, or our dietician, will go to the room and offer an education about the type of diet they’re on and offer a convenient list with the choices we offer for them,” in addition to the regular daily menus, he said.

Shoemaker, who was Saint Joseph Berea’s 2024 Leader of the Year, implemented a new menu that is based on a 21-day cycle rather than the standard three-day turnover. This is  especially important for patients in the medical/surgical unit’s swing bed program, who may stay for up to a month. “Our facility will go through a 21 day cycle, so they’ll go 21 days before they receive the same meal,” he said.

Shoemaker is also involved in the hospital’s Spirit Team and food voucher program, and helped organize its re-entry in the Berea Christmas Parade in 2024. He champions interdepartmental communication. For example, he has worked with the therapy department on expanding the adaptive feeding device program for patients.

Outside the hospital setting, Shoemaker is a member of the Lexington Singers. He also plays the fiddle, mandolin, guitar and dulcimer, and plays and teaches violin locally.  “I do all kinds of music,” he said. “I’m very into old-time music.”

Shoemaker’s approach to Saint Joseph’s trademark humankindness is simple: “Listening to people is one of the most effective ways to provide humankindness,” he said. “Just to show you’re present for somebody in a time of need in a hospital is probably the most valuable quality.”

His department is a big part of that as well, he adds “Food and Nutrition Services is an essential part of a stay at the hospital. We don’t really think about food a lot when we’re sick, but it’s a very important part in keeping somebody comfortable while they’re here.”

Interested in making a difference and helping build healthier communities? Explore current career opportunities at CommonSpirit Health.