Hands on Experience/ Lab
Students have the opportunity to work in the Hospitality Management Program’s own restaurant The Village Café.  The Café is a 100 seat student-run restaurant that is open to the public for lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the semester.  The students will work there for credit in conjunction with class labs and also have the opportunity to work for service hours which will count toward a practicum class.   The following are the labs that the student will take during there time in the program.

• Dining Room Services class (HMGT 125) is responsible for serving the dining public while paying special attention to providing excellent customer service.
• Food and Beverage Management (HMGT325L) students do all of the preparation and cooking for the guests.  This gives the students a taste of quantity cooking with in real-life time constraints.  The prepare lunch for 130 persons by starting at 9:30 Am and having it ready to serve by 11:30 AM. The good part is the students eat the same lunch as the guests.
• The Advanced Food and Beverage Management (HMGT425L) students are in charge of all of the management responsibilities for running the restaurant. They determine, cost, devise a safe food handling plan, order the food for and oversee preparation of the menu.  As well as supervise all of the students preparing and serving the food.  The managers also act as host or hostess seating the guests.  Their other responsibilities involve marketing the meal and then completing an evaluation of their meal through determining if they made a profit.  This is a tremendous responsibility and one that the students don’t take lightly.  They work hard and in the process attain experiences that would not be possible in any other setting.  

The Village Café offers a real-world, real-time experience while completing class credit.  At all times the students are under the watchful eye of the faculty and staff that supervise the various labs that make up the workforce for the café.  The faculty have the opportunity to work one on one with the students in each class helping them, explaining and acting as a safety net in case a problem arises.  The Village Café gives the faculty the opportunity to assist the student in developing their total management style rather than just lecturing about management in the classroom.  
Can’t cook?  Don’t worry, there is another lab class Food Production Management (HMGT225) that involves food preparation techniques.  In this class the students learn the best way to cook vegetables to retain their nutritional advantage to learning the secrets to a flaky pie crust and everything in between.  In this lab the students cook just for the class so if a mistake is made, like salt instead of sugar is put into a chocolate soufflé, then it is treated as a learning experience.