DES MOINES, Iowa — The Iowa ProStart Invitational is being held at the Iowa Events Center Tuesday. Thirty teams from across Iowa come for the culinary competition hosted by the Iowa Restaurant Association Education Foundation.
New to the invitational this year is a cake decorating competition where teams have one hour to prepare and decorate a cake for judges.
Ciarra Byron-Welch, a Culinary Arts and Restaurant Manager Instructor at Des Moines Public School District’s Central Campus, said that the competition gives students the chance to put all the skills they’ve learned to the test.
“It’s exciting to work with students that have the same passion as you to be a mentor and to give them an opportunity that I wasn’t allowed in high school and just to pave the way to see if they want to do other things than what the typical route of life is. They get experience with lots of different life lessons through this journey of competing,” Bryson-Welch said.
The invitational has three competitions, a culinary competition, a manager competition, and the new cake decorating competition.
Winners of the invitational will receive scholarship money and have a chance to compete in the national invitational in Baltimore.
To learn more about the Iowa ProStart Invitational visit its website.