“Welcome to the Joan Bice Tearoom,” said Jenna Walsh, junior in dietetics, reciting her opening line as a server in the Joan Bice Underwood Tearoom.

The student-operated tearoom, located in the basement of MacKay Hall, is a learning laboratory for students enrolled in Hotel, Restaurant and Institution Management 380: Quantity Food Production and Service Management and Hotel, Restaurant and Institution Management 487: Fine Dining Management.

Walsh is a student in the Quantity Food Production and Service Management class, which she says is required for her major, as well as for culinary science and hospitality majors.

The course includes weekly lectures and labs. Students are responsible for planning, preparing and serving meals at the Tearoom.

“They learn stuff in all of their other classes from books,” said John Kramer, tearoom coordinator, “but this is the hands on class where they actually do some critical thinking.”

Kramer said that this junior/senior level class is management focused.

“The skills we’re teaching them is to manage and to be a leader,” Kramer said. “We just do that in the tearoom setting because that’s what we have here.”

Throughout the semester, students rotate through the different positions at the tearoom and experience various production roles such as kitchen manager, pastry chef, retail manager and server.

“We switch roles every lab,” Walsh said. “We have a rotation schedule. I like how it’s different every day.”

Students’ uniforms reflect their role in the tearoom.

“Back of the house usually wears a chef coat, black pants, black shoes and black socks,” Walsh said, “and then table servers wear a white button-up with black pants and black socks.”

Walsh has held many positions within the tearoom, but favors the roles of chef and baker, where she has been in charge of the production of Greek pizza and wheat rolls.

“For head positions like pastry chef, baker, garde manager and chef, you pick up special instructions the day before that the manager pinned on the board for you,” Walsh said. “Then you’re in charge of making a time work schedule and workflow diagram for you and your k preps you’re given.”

K preps are the head positions’ helpers.

“The day of lab, you have a meeting with them and go over what they’ll do according to the schedule,” Walsh continued. “As baker, I then portioned the recipe of dough, weighed out one ounce dough balls and then gave them to my k preps to roll out and put on the pans.”

Walsh said for this position, it was important that she made sure the rolls were in the oven and ready at specific times.

The kitchen manager is the person responsible for creating instructions for the other positions and coordinates various other meal service activities.

“They go through all the different positions, from front of the house to back of the house, until they are the kitchen manager and totally in charge of all the students,” Kramer said.

Walsh said she thinks this is the most challenging role in the tearoom.

“There’s just a lot to do; you have to oversee everyone,” Walsh explained. “The kitchen manager makes sure everything looks okay and oversees the whole production.”

Walsh said the tearoom’s customers are mostly university staff members, but she encouraged more students to eat meals there

“It’s only $6.50; it’s really cheap for how much you get, and it’s always really good,” Walsh said. “And it would help us because it’s a learning lab, and we’d get more out of it.”

Meals served at the tearoom typically include an entree, salad, bread, dessert and a beverage. Past entrees include pork loin, lasagna and chicken.

The tearoom now accepts CyCash, Dining Dollars and the ISU Dining Faculty/Staff Charge Plan as payment for lunches.