Jen Hidinger-Kendrick - Your Legacy is About the People You Bring Into the Fold

Jen Hidinger-Kendrick is the founder of Giving Kitchen. A graduate of Indiana University, she plays a key role in promoting GK's brand and story. Jen has been recognized with a Community Hero Award, featured on the covers of Entrepreneur and Atlanta Magazine, and was a recipient of the 2022 Claes Nobel World Betterment Award. On behalf of GK, she proudly accepted the James Beard Foundation's 2019 Humanitarian of the Year award and saw GK named one of Fast Company's Brands That Matter in 2022.
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2024 Welcome Conference
David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center
September 16th, 2024
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We founded the Welcome Conference in 2014 to create a space where dining room professionals could share ideas, inspire one another, and connect to form a community. By our third year, seats were filled with people from every major industry, who believed that what they could learn from leaders in our industry could supercharge how they ran theirs.
In the ten years since, the Welcome Conference has evolved into America’s preeminent hospitality symposium. We’ve welcomed over 100 speakers, from Fortune 500 CEOs to FBI hostage negotiators, from musicians to magicians - and, of course, some of the most celebrated restauranteurs in the world.
Our attendees believe, as we do, that hospitality is a craft that can be honed, a muscle that can be strengthened - that how they serve their clients is as valuable as what they serve. They believe in caring as much for the people they work with and serve as they do about the products they make. They believe every one of us can choose to be in the hospitality industry, no matter what we do - and that you don’t have to be a luxury business to do it.
Once a year, we gather in New York for an immersive, engaging, and provocative day-long program. We exchange stories and challenges and ideas, and we leave with our gas tanks full.