Sessions of 2025 Summer Conference: Jennifer Elfenbein
Elfenbein, Jennifer
Chair
Jennifer Elfenbein is a Vegan Hospitality Consultant at Plant-Blessed Hospitality and a higher learning educator in hospitality management at Grand Canyon University. She provides instructional design for guest service training and helps food service establishments reengineer menus to be healthier and more sustainable. Jennifer is passionate about working with meeting and event venues, clubs, and senior living residences to develop more inclusive, plant-forward menus and employee training programs that enhance the guest experience and loyalty. Jennifer started her vegan hospitality consulting journey five years ago when she introduced healthy and sustainable menu engineering into the food and beverage operations curriculum at Grand Canyon University. Since then, she has led experiential learning projects that have redesigned the University’s food service menus to include more healthy, allergen-friendly, plant-forward, and sustainable options. She presented her work at the Global Vegan Hospitality and Tourism Conference in 2024. Jennifer has a PhD in Organizational Systems with a specialization in Humane Education. She is committed to inspiring the next generation of hospitality leaders to be more mindful and responsible stewards of God’s Creation.
Sessions:
Strategies integrating plant-based menu design into hospitality
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Westin La Paloma
- Business and Marketing Education
- Family and Consumer Science
The presentation includes results of an ongoing experiential learning project I facilitate in a Food and Beverage Services Management and Operations course at Grand Canyon University. The students are tasked with redesigning one of the University’s two full-service restaurant menus to feature more healthy and sustainable foods and making dietary preferences and restrictions clear to the dining public, introduced to an initiative called Menus for Change: Principles of Healthy Sustainable Menus as a framework for redesigning their menus to encourage innovation in menu design and food inclusion
