Photo Courtesy of Joe Lozoya
2025 Florida Strawberry Festival First Maid Macey Faith Riley, daughter of Billy and Heather Riley, is a junior at Strawberry Crest High School. Her life’s ambition is to attend the Culinary Institute of America in New York and open her own dessert room to enrich her community with the art of culinary expression.
She’s a member of a ProStart Culinary Competition Team, where students from across the country demonstrate their business acumen and culinary skill at competitions to earn scholarships, honors and the opportunity to compete against the very best teams from other states at the National ProStart Invitational. Riley is working on a mixed-berry elderberry coulis and a hibiscus-ginger poached pear stuffed with orange mascarpone. “I’ve been working on this dish for more than a year and I’ve had to master all the flavors,” she said. “It was so hard to get everything to blend perfectly.”
Why did you want to be a part of the Florida Strawberry Festival court?
I simply wanted to give back to my community that’s given so much to me. Plant City is rooted in history and it’s important. You should know where you come from, I think that’s so important. I’m so excited to learn and give back this year.
What advice would you give to other young women who might want to seek this role?
My biggest piece of advice is to be authentically yourself. Going into this pageant, I had a lot of people tell me how I needed to look and act and I took all the information and sat with it but decided I was going to go into this pageant and be who I am. That decision helped me have a really enjoyable experience and I think the judges appreciated that I was myself. Everything I said came from my heart. It was just simply me. If a girl wants to go out for this pageant just know you don’t need years of coaching. You don’t need to be someone you’re not. Come into this pageant and be who you are because that’s ultimately all that matters.
What are you most looking forward to about your year on the Court?
I’m excited for so many things this year and it is so hard to choose just one. I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the entertainers. The lineup this year is so good and it goes so well with the theme “Setting the Stage.” I’m just so excited to be on that big stage with all these girls and meeting entertainers. It’s going to be so much fun.
Who’s your role model and why?
My biggest role model is definitely my sister Haley Riley. Growing up in a military family was really hard. My dad was gone a lot when I was younger because he was deployed, I love my mom and brother but my sister was really there for me. She’s been my best friend forever. She’s in the Army and on deployment right now. She was able to get time off to attend the pageant and that meant the world to me. She was the 2016 Florida Strawberry Festival Queen. When I was on stage, I saw her face in the crowd but had to look away because I didn’t want to start sobbing and mess up my makeup. Seeing this former Plant City beauty queen who was in agricultural her whole life to now serving our country in the Army makes me so proud of her.
What is a core memory you have attending the Florida Strawberry Festival?
I have so many memories that it’s hard to choose one but I would probably have to say in third grade I showed my first pig at the Florida Strawberry Festival. It was a life-changing experience. I learned so much in FFA that year. This community loves agriculture and wants kids to succeed in agriculture so much that they will come and buy a third grader’s pig for thousands of dollars. I was able to pay cash for my first car thanks to those pigs. That first year of showing made me appreciate my community so much and everyone around me and taught me the importance of integrating agriculture into youths’ educations. That’s definitely my first core memory.
What’s your favorite food at the Florida Strawberry Festival?
That’s an impossible question. I personally love the chocolate dipped bacon. It’s a tradition. Ever since I can remember, after a long day of showing animals, me and my mom would walk all the way to the kiddie area and we would get our chocolate dipped bacon. We eat it every single year. It sounds like a crazy combination but it’s so good.
What do you hope to gain by being the 2025 Florida Strawberry Festival First Maid?
There’s two main things I hope to get out of this experience. The first is my strawberry sisters. I’m so excited to be with these girls because they are all so, kind, intelligent and beautiful. Being able to spend this year with them is just a dream come true. I’m so happy we’re together this year. Secondly, I love learning and want to know as much as I can about the festival and its history. It’s so connected to our community and I think it’s so important not to let that history die so I want to learn everything I can about the festival so that I can share it with my kids one day.
What makes Plant City so special?
I just think how Plant City was even created so long ago. The work ethic of the people in this city is so inspiring. We have this huge agricultural sector. It’s just so inspiring. Something I found cool is that during WWII the festival took a six year hiatus. When it returned, the theme was “Setting the Stage.” That’s this year’s theme so I think that really is a cool outlook. It shows they were coming back from this really hard time but the community banded together and they were saying the stage is set and we’re coming back with a bang and it’s gonna be the best year ever. That’s how I feel this year. We have a new stage that’s going to host so much entertainment. The local economy is going to boom. I just think that’s so cool how the work ethic of this community can still be seen in the community.
