From a Mother's Work Ethic to Manor Lake's Kitchen: Jamie Hibberts on Making Assisted Living Feel Like Home

Jamie Hibberts walked into 216 Coworking admittedly nervous about the lights and the microphones, and by the end of the conversation, host Logan Lewis had pulled out the full story behind one of Bartow County's quietest ministries. Hibberts is the food service director at Manor Lake Assisted Living in Cartersville, where she's spent 17 years turning three meals a day into something closer to family dinner. She sat down with Logan fresh off a feature in Cartersville Living magazine, and what followed was less an interview than a walk through a kitchen built on faith, grit, and a mother's example.

A Mother's Work Ethic, and a Detour Through Cosmetology School

Hibberts grew up in Calhoun, Georgia, the third of four kids with two older sisters and a younger brother. Her father passed away when she was 12, leaving her mother to raise the whole family alone. "She worked really hard and showed us all how to work very hard, you know, in life," Jamie said. "She still told us about God and keeping her strong in faith." Jamie herself has been a single mom for 25 years, so she knows firsthand how much her mother carried. After high school she took what she calls a "total different route" and enrolled in cosmetology school, but became a young mom soon after graduating and had to, as Logan put it, take life by the horns. She eventually found her way back into food service, first with the school system, then in senior living, where she says she found "a whole nother love" for making people happy.

Unpacking a Kitchen Before Manor Lake Even Opened

Jamie didn't just join Manor Lake — she helped build it. She started about a month before the community opened its doors, "unpacking the kitchen. It's like opening a whole nother restaurant, which I've never done before, but it was really fun." Watching the community grow from an empty kitchen into a working dining program is, in her words, why she's poured so much into the role: "That's always been home, and I made the kitchen, I made the dining, my baby." In her 17 years in senior living, she's earned back-to-back executive director awards, a GSLA Hero Award nomination, first place in the FSD Cooking Challenge, and certification as a ServSafe professional and proctor.

Hiring for Heart, Not Just Knife Skills

Given senior living's notoriously high staff turnover, Logan asked whether Jamie tests candidates in the kitchen before hiring them. She doesn't. Instead, she walks applicants through the building and watches how they interact with residents. "Anyone's teachable, as long as they're willing to learn," she said. What she's really screening for is a servant's heart and patience, because the job runs on relationships, not recipes. "Chef Ramsay could come down and make the best dish ever, but if he doesn't have a relationship with the residents, they're not going to like it — it is going to go based on the relationship, the bond that they have."

Cook-to-Order Dining and Steve's Hamburger

Rather than handing residents a fixed weekly menu to check boxes on, Manor Lake runs a full dine-in service: servers take table-side orders, the kitchen cooks to order, and residents can choose from a rotating daily special or an always-available menu any time of day. "A lot of residents don't get to go out, so we try to bring that in-house to them," Jamie said, giving them "that experience of going to a dine-in restaurant with their family, but still making it home for them also." Her philosophy on customization is simple and became one of the episode's best lines: "If Steve wants a hamburger every single day for the rest of his life, well, Steve's gonna get that hamburger... that's his groceries at the end of the day, that's what he's paying for."

Care Over a Spreadsheet

Having worked at four different senior living communities, Jamie was direct about what separates Manor Lake from the rest: "They care about the residents. It's not just, we're here to make a profit... they make it a home for the residents there." That care runs both directions — staff bond deeply with residents over time, which Jamie compared to having a hundred grandparents you see and learn from every day. It also means a resident's passing hits the whole team hard, because the connection is real, not transactional. It all circles back to the line she says she tries to instill in her staff daily: "Our residents don't just come there to die. They come there to live. So it's up to us to give them the best life possible."

Beyond the Kitchen: Cake Design, Coastal Country, and a Party Trick

Logan closed the conversation with his usual round of rapid-fire questions, and Jamie's answers rounded out the picture of who she is off the clock. Her favorite movie is Dirty Dancing. Her dream music festival lineup starts with Jimmy Buffett and Kenny Chesney — self-described "coastal country." Her go-to bar appetizers anywhere she eats are cheese sticks, a Santa Fe egg roll, and an onion blossom. Self-care looks like praying, shopping, baking elaborate cakes, and spending time with family, almost all of whom live nearby except her oldest daughter in Jackson, Tennessee. And for a fun fact nobody saw coming: Jamie can fit her fist in her mouth, a party trick she discovered in middle school and never lost.

Listen to the Full Conversation

Catch the full episode of Your Morning Drive with Jamie Hibberts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. It's a conversation about grief, growth, and what it really means to make somewhere feel like home — and a reminder that behind every good meal at Manor Lake is a whole lot of heart.