Bremen Culinary Students Chip Away At Nacho Pop-Up Restaurant

OAK FOREST, IL — Bremen High School teacher Andy French realizes that some lessons are better learned outside of the classroom, especially when it comes to real-life business situations.

Each semester, French tasks his students in his Culinary Management class to create a pop-up restaurant that will provide food for Bremen’s faculty and staff. Every detail of the restaurant — from its theme to menu items and even the design of the uniform’s the eatery’s staff will wear on launch day — is left to the students.

What starts out as a final examination of sorts turns into a rewarding experience for students as they explore the possibility of what it’s like to operate a restaurant. In November, French’s students introduced Nacho Business — a chippy little business that came up with six varieties of the popular menu item and turned what they had learned during the semester into an actual restaurant that even offered a food delivery option.

The class’s 14 students spent the semester working within an $800 budget to figure out food and operational costs for the pop-up restaurants, which is limited one semester each school year to a one-day existence.

“You get to see kids’ creativity come out,” French told Patch on Tuesday. “The creativity that comes out kind of shines above the rest (of the assignment). All of the other stuff, the cooking, the customer service kind of takes care of itself when they are put into that setting.”

He added: “This year, this is some of the best food and some of the best creativity I’ve seen.”

Nacho Business offered six menu varieties, including two original or traditional nachos, two specialty nachos and two dessert nachos. The business came together over the course of the semester and every aspect of the business is put to a vote of the student business owners. Over a month’s time, the final details of the pop-up concept are put into place before orders are taken and the day of business operations begins to take shape.

French said he has gotten plenty of requests for the pop-up restaurant to be open longer than it is. But due to the constraints of the class, the one day the business actually operates is about all the class can handle. French said he has considered a soft opening to provide students with an idea of what being open for business entails before Opening Day actually arrives.

By the time the assignment is complete, the business is opened about five hours. But that is long enough, French said, for students to gain some valuable knowledge.

“Everything has been extremely positive,” French said about the response the pop-up concept assignment has garnered from school faculty and staff.

Part of the advertising comes as a call to staff members who might be tired of eating Thanksgiving leftovers for lunch. French said that this is the first time that students came up with a nacho-driven business model, which proved popular among those who ordered from the restaurant.

The assignment also serves as a precursor for students who plan to attend culinary school after they graduate from Bremen. For those Culinary Management students who may be on the fence about their future career plans, French hopes the final project pushes them in a direction where the skills they learn can be put to good use.

While French wishes the class could be offered year-round and expand its services to students, the lessons learned on a small scale, he hopes, will one day translate to real-world culinary adventures.

“The purpose of this class is to kind of tie up any loose ends and kind of get your feet wet in what you might experience in culinary school or what you might have to look forward to owning your own restaurant one day,” French said.

“There’s a lot more that goes into it than just cooking and that’s something people don’t realize. The kids are getting so many more skills like talking to people and teamwork. …It’s all about working together and making sure that everybody has a job to do because that’s how a restaurant works. It’s kind of like a ship. If one person isn’t pulling their weight, the ship is going to sink.”