The Wolves Den, Niles West’s own student-run coffee shop, is officially open for the year. The Wolves Den started as the ‘Coffee Cart,’ where students enrolled in the Vocational Awareness class would go to different departments in the school to make sales to teachers. This practice stopped as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Now, there’s a new system where the Wolves Den is a walk-up shop.  Matthew Landau, the organizer of the Wolves Den coffee shop, Special Education teacher and instructor of the Vocational Awareness class, thinks this system is a big step up.

“By having the walkup shop, it was your choice to enter our environment, it was your choice to interact with other people. Giving people that choice made it much more acceptable [in terms of COVID policies] as we were coming back,” Landau said.

The Wolves Den coffee shop is great at developing job skills for Vocational Awareness students. Vocational Awareness is a class for Special Education students learning to develop life skills such as social communication, dealing with payments, understanding employer expectations and working as a member of a team. The Wolves Den follows many policies and procedures that you would see in an everyday coffee shop such as opening the shop, cleaning, restocking and many other skills that are beneficial to the students learning how to be successful in a workplace environment.

Frequent customers of the Wolves Den appreciate that students have the opportunity to work during the day, get experience dealing with money and interact with different people.

“This is definitely the highlight of my second period to see the kids. Everyone is really happy here and inviting. Getting to see the students enjoying what they’re doing is definitely a more lively environment compared to your average first or second period,” engineering, computer science and business teacher Raj Patel said.

Teachers aren’t the only one who enjoy the Wolves Den. The coffee shop is very convenient and beneficial to many students because of its location and cheap prices.

“I like that it’s open during the morning so that if I need breakfast I can go during study hall and get something to eat or drink,” sophomore Elani Hernandez said.

“The prices are really convenient and it’s also in the school so you don’t have to go out of your way to go to another coffee shop,” sophomore Sara Bale said.

This is the second year the Wolves Den can be found in the faculty lounge, room 1603, during periods one and two. The Wolves Den serves a variety of drinks and snacks ranging from one to two dollars. Come and support the Vocational Awareness students to see all of their hard work and delicious food and drinks!