Steve Palmer - Hospitality Saved My Life

Steve Palmer is the founder, managing partner, and chief vision officer of the award-winning Indigo Road Hospitality Group. He is also the bestselling author of Say Grace: How the Restaurant Business Saved My Life, a mental health advocate, and co-founder of Ben’s Friends, a non-profit organization offering support to those struggling with substance abuse.  He has been recognized by The New York Times, NPR, Southern Living, Atlanta Magazine and Charleston Magazine for his work, and has presented at TedX Charleston and the Charleston Wine + Food Festival. ---- 2024 Welcome Conference David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center September 16th, 2024 ---- 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.