2026 Scholarships Awarded! At the Hawaii Restaurant Association Golf Tournament Awards Banquet on July 28, 2026 at the Pearl at Kalauao, the Foundation presented two of our seven Scholarship Recipients with their Award Certificates. In the photo: HRAEF Executive Director Sheryl Matsuoka, Scholarship Winner Kris Corrales, Scholarship Winner Kaleo Lum, and HRAEF Board of Director Kelsey Takara of Leeward Community College Not in Attendance: Scholarship Winners Adriane Bartolome, Matthew […]

This Independent Contractor position reports directly to the Executive Director of Hawaii Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (HRAEF) and serves as the primary staff member charged with executing the existing ProStart and Restaurant Ready programs. This position manages the existing ProStart program in current and future High School locations. The coordinator serves to ensure teachers in […]

2025 Scholarships Awarded!  At the Hawaii Restaurant Association Golf Tournament Awards Banquet on June 4, 2025 at the Pearl at Kalauao, the Foundation presented two of our three Scholarship Recipients with their Award Certificates. In the photo: HRAEF Executive Director Sheryl Matsuoka, Scholarship Winner Jazmine Bennermom, Scholarship Winner Brandon Takehara, and HRAEF Chairman Keith Mallini Not in Attendance: Scholarship Winner Dexter Yago

The Foundation was generously gifted a fundraising hole at the Hawaii Restaurant Association golf tournament on June 4, 2025 at the Pearl at Kalauao Golf Course to raise funds for our ProStart student scholarships and school grants. Our dedicated EF hole on the course was called “ProShot for ProStart” where we enlisted professional golfer Alex […]

The 6th annual The Best of Hawaii’s Best Kitchens 2024 is set to return to the prestigious Hyatt Regency Waikiki in just a few weeks! It will be a night of great food, music, and fun, and we learned all of the details on Living808 from Tran Phuong, co-founder of Luna Events & Catering Hawaii, and […]

In 2021 The Hawaii Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (HRAEF) awarded $1,500 scholarships to three deserving local high school students.

On April 19, 2021 the HRAEF was presented with a $5,000 grant check from the PepsiCo Foundation at Sky Waikiki in support of the Hawaii ProStart Culinary Educational Program. 

The Hawaii Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (HRAEF), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization focused on bolstering workforce development beginning at the high school level, awarded Jimmy Nguyen (center) a $1,000 scholarship to further his education at Kapiolani Community College’s Culinary Institute of the Pacific. Nguyen is HRAEF’s first-ever scholarship recipient who earned a national ProStart Culinary Certificate of […]

HONOLULU (KHON2) - A local program is inspiring Hawaii high school students to pursue careers in the hospitality industry. With all of the details, we had Prostart coordiator Marcus Fikse, and Kaiser High School students Taylor Ledgerwood and Ben Taylor. Ben and Taylor taught us how to make easy and delicious desserts, and we learned [...]

The Hawaii Restaurant Association announced Thursday the launch of a nonprofit arm of its organization, the Educational Foundation, which was created as a way to bolster the restaurant industry’s workforce at the high school level. The foundation aims to address staffing challenges in the restaurant and hospitality industries, a particular pain point with the current […]