Hundreds of high school students from across the United States competed in the nation’s premier high school competition focused on restaurant management and culinary arts.
ProStart is a hands-on, real-world, career-connected learning program, and students are mentored by industry leaders. Students not only receive career and technical education credits, but their industry mentors open doors for them when they are ready to enter the workforce.
Hosted by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, the National ProStart Invitational 2025 featured two contests:
- a culinary challenge where teams prepared a three-course meal in 60 minutes without running water and electricity, and
- a management competition where students pitched innovative restaurant concepts and tackled real-world business scenarios.
Washington state’s two championship teams, the culinary team from Bonney Lake High School and the management team from Rogers High School in Spokane, both competed in Baltimore May 2-4. Bonney Lake came in 19th place and Rogers came in 25th.
“It’s a culmination of hard, hard work,” said Kahale Ahina, the chef instructor at Bonney Lake.
His team began at the start of the school year. He mentioned that he always begins by explaining what they can expect.
“In September, I tell them, this is going to be the biggest thing you’ve probably ever done in your life. The most work, the most commitment and you can’t let the team down,” he said. They finalized their menu in December and practiced it once a week after school. Ahina said the students arrive at 2:30 p.m., have a snack and then practice until 7 or 8 p.m.
Ahina led the team of Wyatt Miller, Killan Gitchel, Brendan Anderson, Clinton Revelee and Bria Washburn. Not only do the ProStart teams have teachers, but they also have mentors who work in the industry. Bonney Lake’s mentor was Jennifer Ahina from U.S. Foods.
Their menu was called Coastal Comfort, and it included miso-glazed sablefish, beef short ribs and orange cheesecake. It was built around sablefish the students learned about at an aquaculture farm at NOAA’s Manchester Research Station, Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
The school had a connection with the farm since Ahina knew one of the researchers, Mark Tagal. Ahina was two grades behind him in high school and Tagal knew Ahina’s sister, who introduced them.
“He’s by specialty a marine biologist but he also has that food foundation,” Ahina said of Tagal. “He spent a lot of time in restaurants working in the industry.”
Of course, the competition threw the team some curveballs on the big day. While the team usually has 35 minutes to unpack their boxes, set up their tools and complete their meal prep, they only had 20 minutes in Baltimore. But the kids held their heads high and finished cooking their meal.
“I guess the biggest thing that stood out to me as their chef/coach, and I’m getting chicken skin right now, watching and just seeing them do their thing,” he said. He remembers when they had three minutes left and he wasn’t sure they were going to have time to finish. And then at 20 seconds left, everything started coming together.
“All I could do was just scream as loud as I could and cheer and wave my hands. The amount of pride and celebration was just off the charts.”
The management team from Rogers High School in Spokane is led by Valkyrie Anderson, a teacher who was once a ProStart student herself.
The team of Osvaldo Mojica, Larissa Truax and Hailey Vice created a menu concept, “Entrées & Encores,” was centered around a theater that featured the latest in Broadway plays. The building, historic and remodeled, is located on Main Street in the fictional town of ProStartville. Many believe that it’s haunted by longtime former employees.
Anderson said that her students sat down and thought about what they were interested in and passionate about. One student was highly involved in theater. Another has a dream of opening her own bake shop one day.
“One of the first things I learned about her was, ‘I want to show everybody how to make French éclairs,’” Anderson said.
They decided to come up with a theme that was dinner and a show. They compiled a list of Broadway plays and they wanted the menu to reflect the theme of the play. Luckly, there were a lot of French-themed plays, like Beauty and the Beast and Les Misérables. Ultimately, they went with the Phantom of the Opera.
“When they got into the menu, there’s lots of Easter eggs about Phantom of the Opera,” Anderson said. They planned an opera cake. One of the garnishes was a chocolate facemask like the Phantom wears. They created a mocktail called Christine’s Toast. It was the salad, though, that stood out for Anderson.
“Their salad was one of the prettiest ones,” she said. “We did a giant lavash ring cracker to symbolize her [Christine’s] ring.”
The day of the competition was a little nerve-wracking. One of the students didn’t feel well during the whole trip with a sore throat and dizziness. But the students pushed through.
“They did really well,” she said. “They represented Rogers and Spokane Public Schools and the whole state of Washington. They were super friendly to the other states, which was really important to me.”
It wasn’t all work in Baltimore. Ahina said his students were able to see the sights, including the National Aquarium, and have a nice dinner at Gunter & Co.
Anderson’s kids were also able to visit the aquarium, plus they got a chance to visit Fort McHenry, where Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the “Star-Spangled Banner.”
“We got a good history lesson. We did a bunch of practicing and some sightseeing,” she said. The students from Rogers also enjoyed a nice sit-down meal in Baltimore’s Little Italy neighborhood.
Both teams said they could not have made it to nationals without the help of fundraising and hospitality community.
“I’ve learned that participating at the food shows is a perfect scenario,” Ahina said. “You go and help manufacturers, food brokers. You network and you find out that everyone wants to help kids learn.”
For Anderson, it was Rogers’ team mentor, Garth Hicks, the managing partner of Wild Sage American Bistro in Spokane.
“There would have been no way we could have done that without Wild Sage who put on a benefit dinner,” Anderson said. “There were about 30 people in attendance and their chef is amazing.” She said the dinner included three of the dishes the students created for the competition.
Both teachers also recognized the hard work and passion their students put into this competition.
“It creates an identity for kids,” Ahina said. “It gives you a reason to come to school when you don’t want to. You got this family, this other family that you create.”
Anderson noted that cooking and culinary skills are something the students will take with them. Even if they don’t end up in the industry, the students learn how to cook for themselves.
“We had 500 kids sign up for a culinary class this year,” she said. “We have so much momentum. It’s a lot and we can only take 100 kids.”
