Experience Hospitality
25 industry tours. 500 students. 1 lifechanging week.
It’s one thing to learn about hospitality in a book – it’s another thing to experience hospitality! With generous support from U.S. Bank, the California Restaurant Foundation (CRF) sends 500+ teens on exclusive tours of restaurant headquarters, entertainment venues, and food distributors.
During each tour, U.S. Bank volunteers leads an activity on how to start a small business. Through tours and activities, students learn the business side of foodservice and the various career paths that await them.
Not Your Average Field Trip!
The goal of Experience Hospitality is to show ProStart students the business side of foodservice. And who better to share how to develop a restaurant concept than, say, the Founder of Urbane Cafe? Or supply chain than the President of Sysco? You get the point!
In 2026, we had an impressive line up of leaders from finance, HR, culinary R+D, IT, legal, and operations. Executives cleared their schedules (not easy to do!) and spent the day with the students, showing them how our industry works. We put together a running list of tour highlights and photos on our LinkedIn. Check it out!
Learning Business Basics
U.S. Bank volunteers rounded out each tour with a discussion on small business basics. They reviewed three common ways to access capital (angel investor = halo, gold chain = equity and stacks of cash = loan)! What a memorable way to learn the basics.
Students are putting what they learned into action! They are creating business plans and the 5 schools with the best plans will each receive a $500 grant!
Networking with Execs
Imagine being a high school culinary arts student and getting to have lunch with the leadership team from Golden 1 Center or a VP at BJ’s Restaurants! Talk about access! Each tour hosts a networking lunch with company leaders. It was a unique opportunity for students to try out “networking” – a new skill!
In the News
Thank You Sponsors!
