Students shine at this year's South Beach Wine & Food Festival®

The 2025 South Beach Wine & Food Festival® brought together all the ingredients for a winning recipe: food, fun and celebrity chefs. But it's the FIU students who stole the show for industry professionals on the lookout for rising talent.

“The real highlight of my week was the students,” said Ashley Shapiro, SOBEWFF® senior director of Festival program administration. “The students were exceptional this year." 

More than 1,500 students, many of them in the Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, helped run the national, star-studded, four-day destination event showcasing the talents of the world’s most renowned wine and spirits producers, chefs and culinary personalities. For students, the Festival serves as a bridge between academic learning in the classroom and real-world experiences in the field. It provides hands-on, practical learning experiences at one of the world’s biggest wine and food festivals.

“The students all saw first-hand what makes the South Beach Wine & Food Festival® so special,” said Michael Cheng, dean of the Chaplin School. “The energy, the innovation, the passion and the seamless execution of SOBEWFF® are what makes this experience unique to FIU and special for our students."

Food Network star, Robert Irvine, with FIU students at his fitness-focused SOBEWFF® event.

Students play a major role at almost all of the Festival’s 105+ events, which take place on South Beach and across many major South Florida cities, including Miami’s Coconut Grove and Coral Gables. The students do everything from assisting event managers, providing logistics and operational support as well as culinary support, greeting the more than 65,000 guests who attend and assisting on the FIU Green Team to rescue food and educate guests about the Festival's sustainability efforts (which have diverted more than 40 tons of waste from going into landfills over the past few years).

Hospitality graduate student Candela Gonzalez has been participating in the Festival for the past four years. 

“It’s been an incredible experience," she said. "This is my second year on the FIU Green Team and I really love it because it’s so much fun, but also very rewarding because of the education [on sustainability and recyclable materials] we’re providing to guests and the waste that is diverted from landfills.”

Even culinary personalities like Rachael Ray have been beaming with enthusiasm over FIU students. She recently wrote an opinion piece for the Miami Herald praising the students, whom she has been working with for years. 

“FIU students are the lifeblood of the festival, gaining hands-on experience in everything from event planning to kitchen management. They don’t just witness the magic; they help create it. This real-world learning, coupled with the networking opportunities, can and do, transform lives,” wrote Ray in the piece.

In the piece, Ray mentioned the success story of Andrew Kaplan, an FIU hospitality alumnus who volunteered at the Festival as a student. Ray met him at the Festival, was impressed by his work ethic and eventually hired him as part of her team. Today, Kaplan is the executive vice president of culinary operations for Ray's brand and director of its cooking and kids philanthropy. 

It’s these kinds of potential networking opportunities, interactions and experiences that bring students back for more every year.

This week, students participating in the Festival were among the first ones to interact with new FIU Interim President Jeanette Nunez, who attended a number of different events.

For hospitality graduate student Samantha Wagner, the Festival is a family affair. She’s been participating in the Festival for the past six years, but this year, both she and her brother Max Wagner are team leads. It's also a bittersweet experience because it’s her last before she graduates from FIU.

“The hands-on learning is really unique," Wagner says. It allows students to go beyond classroom discussions and learn by doing. "By participating in the Festival, [students can] get that experience."

Hospitality graduate students Samantha Wagner (left) and Monique Decembert (right) taking part in media interviews.

More than $40 million has been raised to date for FIU's Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management.

Next year marks the Festival's 25th year, which is scheduled to take place February 19-22, 2026.