April 8-10, 2025 | Napa, CA
Summit Overview
Join us on April 8-10, 2025 as The Culinary Institute of America stages the 7th iteration of its ground-breaking conference, the Global Plant-Forward Culinary Summit. Held at the CIA at Copia facility in downtown Napa, CA, we will welcome 200+ chefs, foodservice operators, and experts in food, flavor development, cooking, agriculture and food production, media, and food system transformation from around the world.
The Global Plant-Forward Culinary Summit is a CIA strategic leadership conference inspired by the college’s long-running Worlds of Flavor International Conference & Festival as well as Menus of Change, a joint initiative of the CIA and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Department of Nutrition. The summit is wall-to-wall cooking demos and culinary strategy discussion—emerging from the evidence-based framework of optimal innovation embodied in the 24 Principles of Healthy, Sustainable Menus of the CIA-Harvard Chan School Menus of Change Initiative.
The summit features innovative chefs and experts of traditional cuisines from around the world and across the United States, plus sector specialists from full-service restaurants to contract foodservice.
“Fantastic summit. I specifically loved the test kitchen time and demonstration cooking...and left with lots of great new ideas. Thank you!”
A strong focus on innovation will build on the CIA’s targeted development and incubation of The Blend (blended meat-mushroom burgers) and more recent Pulses of Change initiative (elevating legumes as plant protein), and will ask: what other iconic, transformational menu items and menu categories are waiting to be developed and brought to market?
It will take many paths to get us to a health-promoting, environmentally sustainable food system for the planet in the coming years; accordingly, the summit will invite dialogues between chefs, tech innovators, and manufacturers as well.
Please join us for a high-energy, high-flavor, immersive culinary odyssey and series of strategic dialogues at the intersection of sustainability, health, and the future of American and global menus. Flavor hunters welcome!