The virtual charity auction supports culinary scholarships for students.
Founded in 2019 by event planners Alison Matis and Cheryl Weis, the FestEvents Foundation was created to support workforce development in the restaurant and hospitality industry.
Over the last two years, the Piehole Project raised over $30,000, with proceeds providing Texas-based culinary students with scholarships — each chosen based on both merit and need. And after recent years’ successes, the FestEvents Foundation has been able to quadruple its scholarship offering per student. Now, students are granted a guaranteed renewable scholarship for up to a total of four years, compared to the previous $1,000 single scholarship.
“It’s about the goal, but without the chef, we can’t make it work,” Matis said. “What it comes down to is that we have a really great group of chefs in these cities. They are very kind and very generous. And we really love them for it.”