Students from the Miami Lakes Educational Center competed against teams from other Florida high schools in the 24th Annual ProStart Competition, a hospitality, tourism and restaurant management contest in Orlando.
Over 400 students participated in categories such as Culinary, Management and Edible Centerpiece during the event held March 8 – 9 at the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando.
MLEC won 4th Place in the Hospitality Management Competition, sponsored by the University of Central Florida Rosen College of Hospitality Management.
Juniors Paula Muniz, Ryan Anderson, Kyle Perez, Wester Mordan, and instructor David Nunez represented the school.
The team earned a medal for their performance.
“Now people from Orlando know who we are, because of all of the competitions that we have done,” Nunez said. “One of the top schools even told me, ‘You’re the school to look out for from South Florida.’”
It took the students about four months to create their presentations, Nunez said.
They developed a business plan for a food truck and created the concept and a menu of poke bowls with 12 items, similar to what is served by Chipotle but that included tuna, Nunez said.
The students prepared one bowl and a dessert to make photographs that were included in their submissions, but the food was not presented to the judges in this contest.
One dish was called the Hawaiian Dream, a layered dessert made with whipped cream, pineapple and coconut flakes.
Experienced industry professionals evaluated the MLEC students’ knowledge of their presentations and their ability to work under pressure and anticipate judges’ questions before they were asked, Nunez said.
He said he is steering students beyond chef jobs and toward positions as restaurant managers, owners of dining spots or event to running theme parks.
“My whole thing is to have them see the bigger picture [in the industry]” he said.
Nunez said the Orlando competition was very difficult, especially since it is often dominated by schools from central Florida.
Another goal for the team was to bring more publicity to MLEC, he said.