Restaurant Management Rock stars in training.

Rockwall High School won this year’s  Texas ProStart Restaurant Management competition.

Here are five reasons why:

• They used humor and enthusiasm to portray their ideas.
• They were through, detailed, committed, thoughtful and comprehensive.
• They solved all aspects of a problem, not just one part.
• They established a clear protocol for problem solving.
• They were creative, passionate and knowledgeable.

Our best clients want to be effective leaders, great communicators, get things done and reach their goals.  They want to be  the best in the state and possibly the nation.

Then they ought to do what those four highs school students from Rockwall do.

High school students used to think, “if I can’t get a job anywhere else I’ll get a job in a restaurant.” As our industry becomes attractive to the smartest and most creative students, they say “If I can’t get a job in a restaurant, I am going to have to work somewhere else.”  This happened for all the reasons we know:  rock star chefs on TV, farm to table, and other trends that put restaurants in the forefront of the culture.

Once again this year, the Texas Restaurant Association Education Foundation asked me to judge critical thinking skills at the Texas ProStart finals.   ProStart is a national high school program of culinary and restaurant management education.   Hundreds of Texas high schools participate.  The  management students go through a Shark Tank like sequence to establish which of the 12 finalist teams will get to represent the state of Texas at the National Pro Start Invitational in Minneapolis on May 3-5. ProStart is the best thing the National Restaurant Association and Texas Restaurant Association does and the day of judging is one of my favorite days of the year.  The chance to assist these students in preparing for dynamic careers in our industry is one I do not pass up.