We sat down with Meredith Marin, Co-founder of Vegan Hospitality, to discuss the organization’s journey, impact, and future plans. In this insightful conversation, she shares how Vegan Hospitality has evolved over the past five years, why it recently transitioned into a non-profit, and how it is working with businesses worldwide to create a more vegan-friendly hospitality industry.
Can you introduce Vegan Hospitality and share its core mission and values?
Vegan Hospitality is a U.S. based nonprofit with global food systems impact. We represent the world’s largest network of professional vegan hospitality consultants. Our leadership team, along with our network of independent consultants, empowers businesses in the hospitality industry to implement strategies that reduce food-related emissions and increase inclusivity for vegan and plant-forward guests. Our mission is to create scalable solutions that make vegan dining accessible and desirable for all while shifting the hospitality industry toward sustainability. We stand for a world where every hospitality venue offers diverse, accessible vegan options, significantly contributing to the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions, promoting a culture of inclusivity, and reducing animal suffering.

What key milestones and achievements has Vegan Hospitality reached over the past five years?
Over the past five years, Vegan Hospitality has built a global network of consultants who work with hospitality businesses to embrace plant-based practices. Our team has trained consultants in over thirty countries to help establishments create profitable vegan-friendly menus and improve their guest communication.
We’ve also partnered with hotels and lodges to implement plant-forward programming, supported food and beverage teams in reducing emissions through menu changes, and conducted workshops for industry professionals on the value of including vegan-friendly and sustainable programming as a profitable guest strategy rather than as an afterthought.
Through our hotel certification program, we’ve set a benchmark for what it means to deliver a vegan guest experience that meets the same standard of quality that the traditional guest experiences.
Enhancing animal welfare activism, we have trained employees from organizations including Mercy for Animals, Plant Based Treaty, and more with the goal to strengthen their corporate outreach initiatives and restaurant campaigns. We also hosted 3 online conferences with over 700 registered attendees, and created a platform for vegan activists and entrepreneurs to share their expertise.
We brought attention to veganism in the hospitality industry through media interviews on some of the industry’s top podcasts, including No Vacancy News, Hospitality Daily, and the Sustainable Hospitality Podcast. We also brought the vegan perspective into conversations with industry leaders via our partnership with Green Globe, a leading sustainable hotels certification, and our attendance at the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance Summit.

What motivated Vegan Hospitality to transition into a non-profit organization?
As a non-profit organization, we can amplify our impact and work more collaboratively with partners who share our vision for a sustainable future. This shift enables us to focus on influencing education, setting industry standards, and advocating for research-backed change while building stronger partnerships with global organizations, hospitality associations, and other key stakeholders.
Our non-profit status reflects our mission-driven approach. It positions us to secure funding for large-scale projects, such as pilot programs with hotels, and to invest in resources like co-branded toolkits and industry training. Becoming a non-profit allows us to dedicate all of our efforts to serving the greater good while creating systemic change within the hospitality industry.
What services does Vegan Hospitality offer, and who are your primary target audiences?
We provide tailored support to businesses in the hospitality industry, including hotels, restaurants, and catering companies, as well as the associations and organizations that support them.
Our core services include consultant training, where we train vegans to become hospitality consultants and equip them with the tools to support businesses worldwide. We also provide corporate strategic planning, helping corporations develop and implement plant-based goals, such as transitioning a percentage of their menus to plant-based options. Additionally, we offer implementation support, guiding food and beverage teams, marketing departments, and guest services teams to successfully adopt vegan-friendly practices. Through our hotel certification program and online workshops, we educate and certify businesses in delivering an exceptional vegan guest experience.
Our target groups range from boutique hotels to multinational hotel chains and restaurant groups, with a shared goal of creating accessible, profitable, and sustainable vegan-friendly solutions.

What are your plans for 2025?
In 2025, our focus will be on expanding our impact through key strategic initiatives. We will collaborate with sustainable hospitality NGOs and hotel associations to launch pilot programs with hotel chains, collect data, and ultimately publish impactful research on the business case for plant-forward food sourcing. Our hotel certification program, which launched last year, will be expanded to empower more hotels globally to achieve high-quality vegan guest programming and benefit from staff training.
We will also increase industry education by hosting more online workshops targeted at key regions worldwide, starting in February with a focus on helping restaurants profitably keep their Veganuary offerings year-round. Additionally, we will partner with universities to continue integrating vegan hospitality into curriculums. Coalition building will be another priority, as we join forces with animal welfare organizations to advocate for plant-based solutions across the food industry.
Our consultant training program will continue into its fifth year, with plans to train an additional 40 vegan hospitality consultants in 2025 and expand our impact into even more regions.
As we are in our founding non-profit year after 5 years in business, we are also still finalizing our founding board (and still accepting applications!) and focusing on fundraising (if you are interested in donating to make an impact, we have very specific ways you can help, please get in touch!)