The Cougar Den, the store where students work the registers and all the appliances, has a well-established system. The students start each day by restocking the shelves with chips and beverages, the tills are all reset, to have change for purchases. Each day, over $200 worth of product is sold. There are requirements to earn this money and keep the store running. “Students, that’s the most important part,” said Store Operations teacher Kerri Ferrate. “We need students to make smoothies, frappes, and we need them to be running the cash registers.” The Cougar Den is similar to a high maintenance machine and needs many things to keep it running.

The Cougar  Den is a huge part of the lunches for students, requiring it to be functioning just as a real store, and getting all the customers their orders and providing good customer service. “We teach the students how all the machinery works and quality customer service skills, as to prepare them for when they’re actually running the store and taking orders,” said Ferrate. Also, the Cougar Den provides the students with healthy snacks, that, while nutritious, are also tasty. The most obvious necessary to keep the store running is customers. While the Cougar Den is a part of the Store Operations class it is very similar to running a real store, and a significant experience for the students. Many students will be going into low-end jobs as they pursue college and other aspirations, making the Cougar Den a significant experience for students.

“The main focus that the Cougar Den is meant to teach the students is how to run a business,” said Ferrate, from ordering product to knowing the proper amount of product needed, when the product will expire and having an overall ability to predict how much product will be sold, how much may go to waste, and how to make a profit off of all sales. Some students who haven’t actually enrolled in the course assume that the Cougar Den is a difficult class to go through, but students currently enrolled such as, Dominic Telemaque and Natalie Geilenfeldt believe the class to be fun and not too difficult to understand. The training the class receives prior to running the store makes it quite easy for someone with no experience in a store environment at all.