Photos by Ralph Freso
Grand Canyon University's Cañón 49 serves customers modern cuisine with a Southwest twist. Now it will serve another purpose: It will be the hub of the university's new culinary arts offerings.
The first culinary arts elective course in the Colangelo College of Business is set to launch in spring 2026 with plans to offer a culinary arts minor in fall 2026 amid a bustling Phoenix hospitality and tourism landscape rich with restaurants, resorts and country clubs.
Cañón 49 already has a kitchen spacious enough to accommodate between 15 and 20 students for the pilot course, slated to start in January.
Gabe Gardner, director of food entrepreneurship at Local First Arizona, will helm GCU's culinary arts initiative and has taught at Central Arizona College, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Seattle, Savannah (Georgia) Tech College and Sinclair (Ohio) College.
This will not be your traditional culinary institute.
Gardner worked with Dr. Jennifer Elfenbein, the business college's hospitality management chair, to build a curriculum from a restaurant perspective to make students more marketable and better prepared for jobs.
Instead of stations comprised of a burner and stove, students will be taught how to prepare food in a restaurant setting. That will partner seamlessly with Elfenbein’s hospitality courses to enhance student marketability.
This gives students a more well-rounded experience than what Gardner said he saw at pre-COVID culinary schools, such as tension between cooks, servers and managers.
“I think the restaurant industry has changed forevermore because of that,” Gardner said.
When John Kaites took over as Colangelo College of Business dean in October 2023, he asked Elfenbein about her wish list.
“Our industry needs a culinary program,” Elfenbein said, noting how Scottsdale Community College and Inspiration Academy in Fountain Hills run programs in the East Valley. But “we have nothing to feed all the restaurants and hotels and resorts and country clubs that are here in the city of Phoenix.
"So I'm always looking at ways that we can support the industry and our community. I get job postings all the time from our partners. Cooks are always (listed) on there; there's just not enough cooks. And I think that was a pandemic thing. I think a lot of people left the industry.”
But the potential to thrive remains.
The Valley is home to several corporate restaurant companies, such as Fox Restaurant Concepts (Culinary Dropout, Blanco, The Henry, Doughbird, Flower Child and the Arrogant Butcher) and Upward Projects (Postino, Windsor, Federal Pizza, Joyride), as well as several hundred independent restaurants.
That Cañón 49’s kitchen is fully equipped, complete with food permits, meant Gardner and Elfenbein had more time to spend sculpting the curriculum for the spring and for the future.
The first class will involve producing basic soups, stocks, sauces and knife cuts.
Plans are for the culinary institute to sell its baked goods at local farmers markets and is in negotiations with Sodexo, the food services company that partners with GCU, to sell products at the university’s convenience stores.
“(Sodexo) is currently buying bread from another vendor,” Gardner said. “And I said, ‘Well, why couldn't we do that? Right? Baking is one of the things I really like doing.’"
And Gardner sees the potential to operate at popup events, such as Super Bowl parties, as well as serve doctoral students and at other university functions. He has spoken to students at recent campus markets about how culinary classes could enhance their businesses.
Kaites hopes dining at Cañón 49 will turn into a "five-star experience at a three-star cost. ... Once it's up and running, it's going to be such a unique dining experience for students."
What will make this effort different, too, is that this initiative will align with GCU's mission as Christ-centered university.
“Our goal is to make sure that Christ is integrated into it, and we can help you turn your faith into action,” Kaites said. “But this culinary institute will be distinctive because of that.”
The recent addition of a studio at the T.W. Lewis Center for Student Success in the business college means the potential to conduct cooking classes across the nation.
One of Gardner’s selling points to President Brian Mueller and other university officials was that GCU is in the middle of a community that has a high and low season, with tourism serving as the driving economic engine.
With top hotels such as the Phoenician and Scottsdale Fairmont Princess Resort, convention centers and golf courses, the need for quality service is paramount.
It took only a week for Elfenbein to present the culinary plan to Kaites and receive approval from Mueller.
“It's still going through the development process right now, but it took less than a month from the idea to the starting gate,” Kaites said of launching that first course. “And that's the beautiful thing about Grand Canyon University.
“When we see a good idea, we launch, and there's no bureaucracy from here to there. It's an unbelievable place to be creative and to develop new programs for our students, innovation and ways to reach people for Christ.”
GCU News senior writer Mark Gonzales can be reached at [email protected]
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