Al Zehnder

Coming Up

At Zehnder's of Frankenmuth, the work is still organized around family-style chicken dinners, and Al Zehnder’s role as chairman and CEO keeps that format at the center of the business. The family name has long been attached to a service style built for shared tables and a steady dining room rhythm. The company has also pushed the model outward, using that same base to build something larger than a single meal.

Where They Are Now

Chairing and leading Zehnder's of Frankenmuth, Al Zehnder keeps the operation anchored to family-style chicken dinners, the signature that continues to define the place. The company has also been described as moving toward a four-season family vacation destination, which broadens the work of hospitality beyond service at table. In that framework, the dining room is one part of a larger guest experience that is meant to carry across the day, the night, and the calendar. The indoor water park hotel concept has been central to that expansion, and Al Zehnder has said it has been very successful. The development shows a business extending its reach without severing itself from the family appeal that made it recognizable. The result is a destination built on continuity: the same core meal, widened into a stay that aims to hold attention beyond dinner.

Signature

Family style chicken dinner is the signature dish tied to Al Zehnder's operation at Zehnder's of Frankenmuth. The dish defines the house style as much as the menu. It is built for sharing, for pace, and for the kind of service that treats a table as a group rather than a collection of individual orders. As a signature, it marks the business’s center of gravity: generous service, family-style hospitality, and a format that has remained the anchor even as the company has widened its ambitions.

In Their Words “Our whole focus as a company has been to develop a four-season family vacation destination, and a big part of that has been our entry into the indoor water park hotel concept which has been very successful.” “Owning a family business is a life sentence in a way.” Read together, the quotes point to two pressures that shape family enterprises in food service: growth and continuity. One frames the business as something being built outward into a broader destination model; the other acknowledges the permanence of ownership that stays in the family. Between them sits Zehnder's of Frankenmuth, still defined by family-style chicken dinners, now extended into a wider hospitality format that reaches beyond the meal.