LIHUE — Mayor Derek S. K. Kawakami was a guest on Friday during the Raider Cafe open house at Kauai High School.
“It’s a good feeling to be back in familiar territory,” Kawakami said. He met up with a campus monitor and inquired on what was on the lunch menu. “Kalua and cabbage. What time do the students eat?”
Under the auspices of Kauai High School teachers Griffin Kelley and Tanya Carranza, the Raider Cafe is a collaboration between the two teachers’ class and the neighboring entrepreneurship class led by Gregory Anderson.
Raider Cafe is a school community operation that services the school’s staff and teachers with cafe style beverages and light meals or snacks. Its students have special needs and are learning work skills by creating the orders that come in online or in person.
“Sometimes, we sends students out to the office or teachers’ lounge to get orders,” Carranza said. “These students are really good. They know the differences between the different beverages and have little problem creating the orders. They even go out to deliver some of the orders to teachers in their classrooms.”
The entrepreneurship class creates the promotional items for the cafe, including posters, social media, menus, and other marketing pieces.
“This is a really good class,” said Kauai High School senior Dasha Dahilog, who served as a tour guide for the open house. “I have some friends who took Mr. Anderson’s class, and they have really good jobs.”
But the collaboration does not end with morning beverages and snacks. Maryann Donagher, the Kauai High School art instructor, had her students’ work posted on the walls for people to admire, and Carla Kird, the Kauai Performing Arts Center instructor, was scheduled to have her KPAC students provide entertainment — a preview of their upcoming production — for the guests.
Donagher’s student art work will be displayed later in the Kauai Society of Artists gallery as a student show for everyone to enjoy.
Dahilog said the cafe also partners with the school’s agriculture class that provides the cafe with fresh eggs the students can cook to fill orders.
Orly Yadao, owner of Orly’s Patisserie, was another guest to the open house. “They haven’t asked me anything yet. I’m looking for workers,” Yadao said.
Carranza said originally the Raider Cafe was open one or two days a week. However, after developing its student-based work learning curriculum, the Raider Cafe is now open five days a week for the teachers and Kauai High School community.
