The First Northwest Ceremony
The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association held its first Northwest Florida Chapter ROSE Awards on Wednesday 16 September 2026 at the Henderson Beach Resort, 200 Henderson Resort Way, Destin. The association reports more than 150 hospitality professionals and industry leaders at the ceremony, more than 70 nominees across 13 categories, and more than a dozen team members honoured with a ROSE Award or another special award category.
The programme recognises frontline team members, from housekeeping and front desk staff to valets and chefs. This was the chapter's first year, and the association's regional director said the chapter intends to run it again.
The venue is a Destin resort with a ballroom and more than 10,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space, on the resort's own site.
The Two Sales and Marketing Lines
The roster separates hotel and resort roles from restaurant roles in most categories, and sales and marketing is one of the splits. Maggie Weaver of Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa took the hotel and resort line. Taylor Williams of Dolly Parton's Pirates Voyage Dinner & Show took the restaurant line.
For a hotel reading the list, the hotel and resort line went to a branded resort operation on the Emerald Coast. The other went to a dinner-show venue where the sale is a ticketed seat.
The Hotel and Resort Winners
Back of the House, hotel and resort: Javier Pocasangre, Henderson Beach Resort. Culinary Service, chef or cook, hotel and resort: Daniel Peters, Beach Walk Café / Henderson Park Inn. Event Service, banquets and events: Jon Lovett, Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa. Front of the House, hotel and resort: Josh Bailey, SpringHill Suites Navarre Oceanfront / Peregrine Hospitality. Spirit of Hospitality: Jaxon Mitchell, Emerald Grande at HarborWalk Village. Veteran Excellence in Hospitality Award: Casey Moser, Chef Jim Shirley Enterprises. Golden Pineapple Award: Frank Flautt and Fred Alias, Sandcastle Resorts, LLC. Allied Member of the Year: The Southern Agency.
The roster draws on a branded beach resort, a select-service property in Navarre, an independent inn, a management group and resort companies. The host venue supplied a winner in the back-of-house hotel category.
A Programme Running in Nine Chapters
FRLA's site lists ROSE Awards for nine chapters: Broward, Hillsborough, Monroe, Northeast, Northwest, Pinellas, Space Coast, Suncoast and Volusia. The Volusia chapter also ran a first ceremony in September 2026, at Daytona State College, with nearly 50 nominees across 13 categories and scholarships to six local hospitality students, on FRLA's release index.
The awards sit alongside the association's training and compliance work. FRLA offers food safety training through Safe Staff and its subsidiary RCS Training, and its Educational Foundation runs high-school hospitality programmes across the state.
What the Association Reports About Itself
FRLA's release describes the association as founded in 1946 as the Florida Restaurant Association, merged with the Florida Hotel and Motel Association in 2006, with more than 10,000 members across independent hoteliers and restaurateurs, franchise operators, theme parks and suppliers. Carol Dover is president and chief executive.
The release puts Florida's hospitality industry at nearly $112 billion and two million employees. A separate FRLA release states 1.3 million employees. The association's own figure has moved between releases, and both totals here stand as the association prints them.
What Could Not Be Corroborated
The winner list comes from the organiser. A 30a-tv.com item reproduces the release word for word, so the roster stays single-source to FRLA, and ten of the fourteen lines appear in no independent coverage found for this piece.
The release reports more than 70 nominees across 13 categories and then prints 14 award lines. The Allied Member of the Year line went to a company. Both counts stand as the release states them.