FIU Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management students assist in and benefit from the South Beach Wine & Food Festival® for the 22nd year

The Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at Florida International University and FIU students and staff are celebrating their 22^nd year of helping to produce the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival presented by Capital One (SOBEWFF®).
 
Chaplin, a top 10-ranked hospitality school, has been the beneficiary of the festival since the beginning. During the four-day, 100+ event, gourmet gathering on the beach, students will gain hands-on learning experience by working alongside more than 450 chefs and wine and spirits producers. They also will work with Cecilia.AI, the world’s first robotic bartender.  Powered by artificial intelligence, Cecilia.AI is known for providing an interactive guest experience.
 
Students in the SOBEWFF volunteer program work for months to help plan, organize, and execute the festival, which runs from Feb. 23-26, 2023. More than 1,300 students will work more than 4,300 shifts. Student responsibilities include event management and logistics, culinary lead and support, and participation in audience demonstrations like a new one with Cecilia.AI, who made her debut at the festival last year.
 
Cecilia.AI and students from the award-winning student club, the FIU Bartenders Guild, will bring the university to the beach via an interactive lesson. Guests will learn the intricacies of mixology and Future Proof,  FIU and Bacardi’s newest teaching platform. It’s all part of the FIU Bacardi Center of Excellence, which offers the only spirits management curriculum of its kind through a partnership with the iconic spirits brand. Students from the Bartender’s Guild also will showcase their talents to festival guests during Bacardi Carnival, hosted by Andrew Zimmern on Sunday, Feb. 26.
 
“Our students are the only ones in the world who get to work alongside such great talent and help plan for and execute a world-renowned Festival with more than 100 events well before they graduate,” said Michael Cheng, dean of the Chaplin School. “Now that’s a resume booster.”
 
FIU’s footprint at the festival also expands with the addition of the FIU Alumni Association tent, which is positioned next to Cecilia.AI inside the Chaplin School activation, for a larger FIU presence at the Goya Foods' Grand Tasting Village featuring Publix Culinary Demonstrations sponsored by Sub-Zero Group Southeast. Visitors will get to taste foods from school partner, Quirch Foods.
 
For the first time, the 1,300 student volunteers at SOBEWFF® will include students with autism and/or an intellectual disability who are part of the FIU Embrace program. They will earn micro-credentials and experience at the festival. Some of them will be front and center at one of the festival’s intimate dinners, the FIU Embrace Dinner presented by Mollydooker Wines hosted by Andrew Zimmern and Richard Sandoval at Toro Toro at the Intercontinental Miami on Thursday, Feb. 23, part of the American Airlines Dinner series.
 
SOBEWFF® got its start at the hospitality school on the FIU Biscayne Bay campus in 1997, when late FIU hospitality professor Patrick “Chip” Cassidy brought founder Harvey Chaplin and Mel Dick of Southern Wine & Spirits and Marvin Shanken of Wine Spectator Magazine in to sponsor the one-day wine and food festival called the Florida Extravaganza. In 2002, it was relocated to South Beach by then Director of Special Events & Media Relations at Southern Wine & Spirits of America Lee Brian Schrager and the rest is history.
 
To date, the festival has raised more than $34 million in support of its educational mission to cultivate future leaders of the hospitality industry at the Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management.