The Panther Paw, better known as the school restaurant, has had a successful first semester this school year serving both staff and students. The program in its second year with Chef Yep. However, there’s actually more to “the Panther Paw” than just students cooking for other students.

Fun fact: the Panther Paw delivers! That’s right, one of the new features of the program this year is a delivery service for staff. According to Mr. Yep, this has boosted profit and allowed more food requests from people outside of the restaurant. The restaurant opens every Thursday and Friday and changes the menu theme every two weeks.

Restaurant management is the class that students take to work at the Panther Paw. The class helps students “develop a palate,” says Mr. Yep.

One facet of the class is to let students attempt recipes on their own, which gives them room for learning more about cooking. Because everything is made from scratch, students are exposed to a wide variety of cooking experiences. On Mondays and Tuesdays students do book work and on Wednesday they start prepping the food to be sold the next two days in the restaurant. According to senior Molly Dialo, who has been working with the program this year, “It’s a very nice program and I have actually learned a lot about cooking.”

Chef Yep claims that the reason for the Panther Paw’s successful first quarter is not only because of the good food, but also the increase in popularity of the restaurant. With expectations for the restaurant continuing to rise the students running the Paw have a lot of work to keep up with.