SINGAPORE — Food and Beverage (F&B) Business students at Nanyang Polytechnic will now get a hands-on experience in a restaurant and cafe that have just been opened on campus.

The training restaurant, L’Rez and cafe, L’Cafe were opened by Minister of State for Education Sim Ann yesterday (Sept 24). Both outlets currently only serve students and staff of the polytechnic, but will be open to public from Sept 30.

Final-year students will spend a semester each at the restaurant and cafe. Apart from honing their service skills, students also get to create new dishes and mocktails.

Ms Gwenlyn Tan, a F&B Business student at Nanyang Polytechnic, said: “The past six months in L’Rez and L’Cafe has been really enriching as I have never ever worked in a real restaurant before and being exposed to both front-of-house and back-of-house, I really learned the operations — no doubt it’s in school, but it really gives us a very real-life and hands-on experience over here.”

Ms Gina Weers, the course manager, said: “In the training restaurant, they actually cook the food. But in the training cafe, what they do is, we work with multiple partners, and they will actually find out what’s most popular with the students currently — be it croissants, pies, cheesecakes, donuts — and they actually talk to the suppliers to bring in the products, and they do constant research, multiple surveys to find out what’s in.

“They’ve been telling me that they like hotdogs and meatballs. So I encourage them to (find out) who are the suppliers for hotdogs and meatballs and bring them in.”

The polytechnic also has a celebrity chef programme featuring international and local chefs to inspire students and give them fresh insights into the F&B industry. CHANNEL NEWSASIA