An explorer named Mick Leahy earned global fame in 1930 by discovering an island-bound community that was totally untouched by modern culture. But that’s nothing. Just this week I came across 400 teens who didn’t know they’re supposed to loathe the notion of working in the restaurant business.
They were whooping so loudly in delight at the prospect that parents should have been summoned. But moms and dads were hooting and hollering louder than the kids. They’d managed to keep the youngsters on a foodservice track instead of seeing them bail for careers in law or finance. Now it was time to celebrate. Their high school students were going to feed and serve the public!
Leahy might’ve let a society this aberrant remain in obscurity. He’d have for sure not left his boat if he knew the subculture gathered every year for a tribal test of skills. For two days, the nation’s hottest young prospects compete for $200,000 in scholarships to continue their pursuit of foodservice careers.
Leahy might not have ventured into that scene, but every restaurant employer should attend the National ProStart Invitational competition to see the flipside of the industry’s perception problem. They’d find a group of kids and parents burning with a desire to make this supposed career of last resort their first choice of the life they want to lead.
The teams of youngsters earn a chance to compete in the national competition by besting the squads of every other high school in their state that participates in ProStart, a program intended to give the students a jump-start in pursuing hospitality careers.
Run by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, ProStart is an ideal realized. Teens with a fever for the restaurant business can start pursuing their passion while still in 11th and 12th grade. The program provides a combination of classroom and kitchen experience to get the youngsters on their way, be it to work in restaurants after graduation or pursue college-level instruction in culinary skills or restaurant management.
About 165,000 youngsters are currently participating in 1,850 high schools. From that group, about 400 qualify for the national showdown by besting their peers in one of two competitions.
Kids interested in becoming restaurant managers and owners come up with a plan for a concept in collaboration with three like-minded classmates. They then pitch that venture to judges in a format similar to “Shark Tank,” the popular TV show where entrepreneurs vie for development capital from a panel of financiers.
The judges pick which idea is the strongest, weighing such factors as how much thought, research and practicality the kids have put into their plans. The evaluations are far from superficial. In one of the pitches I heard, a judge questioned how a proposed concept could have only one hand-washing sink in the kitchen given its projected volume. And where was the exterior door? What happened if a grease fire forced an emergency evacuation?
Another judge asked the team how it’d handle a situation where only one employee came to work because the rest of the staff had bolted for a one-day-only special event in town. Still another pressed for a breakdown of a proposed venture’s social-media marketing costs.
Some kids are so serious about launching their concepts that they trademark the names and other features pre-competition so their ideas won’t be swiped and are ready for development, NRAEF President Rob Gifford told me.
The other form of competition pits four-person culinary teams against one another. Each high school squad is expected to come up with a three-course meal during the limited time they’re given to prep, cook and plate. Their “kitchen” is what looks like a booth at a trade show, one right after another.
The competitions started at 8 a.m. sharp and ran through the day. Remember, these are teens, an age group universally suffering from a propensity to over-sleep and under-shower. Yet every squad turned out crisply dressed and ready to wow. If the slightest thing was amiss, the transgressor was corrected by teammates or instructors. Many would have made capable Marine Corps drill sergeants.
Parents seemed more comfortable in their dual roles as cheerleaders and photographers. They sat for hours as their children competed, as proud as any valedictorian’s mom or dad.
The winners are announced at a wrap-up gala that was tenser than the Oscars and louder than a Metallica concert. The results, after all, would affect the course of many lives.
By then, the impact of ProStart and its national competition could not have been clearer for the restaurant business as a whole. There may be no better antidote to the industry’s image problem than the enthusiasm that reigned in a Washington, D.C., ballroom for two days.
Even Leahy’s discovered tribe would have gotten that in a flash.
The winners
In the management competition, where teams pitched a restaurant concept they’d brainstormed, first place went to students from Wilbur Cross Hight School in New Haven, Conn. They’d come up with a plan for an ethnic, casual restaurant called Nafas Kitchen, which would feature the cuisines of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Levant Region. It would also serve as a community center and advocacy incubator for the market it served.
In the culinary competition, the top prize went to Plymouth Canton Educational Park in Canton, Mich. The team’s three-course menu consisted of an appetizer of soy-marinated tuna, a main dish of strip steak and braised short rib with potato dauphinoise and puree, and a dessert of coconut Bavarian with orange-almond cake.
Together with four runners-up in both categories, the winners split the $200,000 in scholarship money.