Strawberry Crest High School is in Dover, Florida — a farming community outside Tampa that most people couldn't find on a map.
Last weekend in Orlando, it outcooked, outmanaged, and outcompeted every culinary program in the state.
Strawberry Crest walked out of the 25th Annual Florida ProStart Competition with first place overall, first in culinary, and first in restaurant management — a complete sweep of the two categories that send winners to the National ProStart Invitational in Washington, D.C., this April.
The Man Behind the Program
Chef Paul Bonanno didn't start his career in a classroom.
He spent 17 years as a professional chef — including as executive chef at Tampa's Bernini restaurant — before he walked into Strawberry Crest and built something that now beats every culinary program in Florida.
His students pass their ServSafe and National Registry of Food Service Professionals exams at a 98% rate.
Ninety percent of his top graduates go straight into the industry or a post-secondary culinary program the day they leave his kitchen.
That's not a teaching record.
That's a pipeline.
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Riley Clark, Brinley Miranda, Ethan Weisenritter, Jessie Andrew, and Samantha Chung won the culinary competition.
Toby Highsmith, Macey Riley, Dayana Hernandez, Abigail Emin, and Pooja Gopinathrao won the management competition — and both teams now head to nationals to represent Florida in April.
Florida Built Something the Rest of the Country Should Copy
Here's the number that puts this in perspective.
Florida's ProStart program enrolls approximately 30,000 students annually — the largest in the entire nation.
The national program reaches 222,000 students total, which means Florida alone accounts for more than one in eight participants across all 50 states.
And Florida needs every one of them.
The state's hospitality industry — worth $111.7 billion and employing nearly two million people — is running short on workers.
Florida currently has only 53 available workers for every 100 open positions, one of the worst ratios in the country.
ProStart doesn't fix that with a government grant or a diversity initiative.
It fixes it the old-fashioned way — universities and private sponsors fund it, real chefs teach it, and students compete for their share of $2.1 million in scholarships from institutions like the Culinary Institute of America, Florida International University, and UCF's Rosen College of Hospitality.
Those universities aren't writing checks out of charity.
They're recruiting the workforce they need to stay competitive.
This Is What 330 Kids Who Already Know What They Want Look Like
Strawberry Crest wasn't the only school that showed up ready to compete.
George Jenkins High School in Lakeland — Reese Yungbluth, Jaidyn Lewis, and Colin Hanger — won the Waiters Relay Competition. Denisse Sarria Tuero from St. Lucie West Centennial in Port St. Lucie won the Edible Centerpiece Competition.
Wekiva High School in Apopka placed fourth overall after finishing fourth at the national management competition last year.
More than 330 students from nearly 40 schools made the trip to Orlando — not for a field trip, but to compete under pressure in front of industry judges for real scholarship money.
The FRLA Educational Foundation has been running this competition for 25 years because Florida's hospitality industry understood something a long time ago that Washington still hasn't figured out: the best workforce programs are built by the industries that need the workers, not by bureaucrats who've never run a kitchen.
The kids who competed last weekend aren't the next generation of Florida's hospitality workforce.
They're already it.
Sources:
- Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association Educational Foundation, "More Than $2.1 Million in Scholarships Offered for Florida High School Students in Annual Hospitality Competition," FRLA, February 24, 2026.
- Drew Dixon, "FRLA culinary competition among high schoolers draws about 330 students to Orlando event," Florida Politics, February 24, 2026.
- FRLA, "ProStart NewsBites March 2024," FRLA.org, March 2024.
- National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, "San Dimas High School and Chalmette High School Capture National Honors," ChooseRestaurants.org, May 5, 2025.
- Florida Politics, "Culinary and restaurant students from Apopka high school cook up a strong performance at national competition," May 12, 2025.
