Vocational schools in Taiwan have long sought to broaden their programs by setting up restaurants, hotels and cafes on campus grounds to allow their students to intern and learn by doing. Now some liberal arts universities are following suit.
Fu Jen Catholic University in New Taipei City’s Sinjhuang District (新莊), renowned for fostering many of the nation’s fashion and clothing gurus, has established a student-run clothing store on campus.
According to intern store manager Ouyang Chia (歐陽嘉), a third-year student in the university’s Department of Textiles and Clothing, the school has given students great freedom in deciding what is sold and how it is presented.
Photo: Kuo Yen-hui, courtesy of Fu Jen Catholic University
The clothes are NT$50 less expensive than items in regular stores, Ouyang said, adding that students make seasonal changes to the shop’s offerings.
Ouyang said she thought that running a shop would be easy before her internship, but after taking charge, she realized there are many details that demand attention.
For example, when displaying clothes, Ouyang said putting items with brighter color schemes on top better attracts customers’ attention.
Photo: Kuo Yen-hui, Taipei Times
Beyond allowing students to gain experience operating a store, the program allows students to rent space in the store at NT$20 per day to exhibit and sell their own products, Ouyang said, adding that there was no limitation on what could be put up for sale.
Many students have used this opportunity to sell their own products and earn some cash on the side, as well as gaining work experience, Ouyang said.
Another intern store open to students a restaurant and cafe for Fu Jen’s Department of Restaurant, Hotel and Institutional Management, which leaves everything from the design of the menu to the food and its presentation in the hands of students, while teachers assist on the side.
Photo: Kuo Yen-hui, Taipei Times
The department also runs a hotel for guests who are visiting the university. The hotel is not open to the general public.
Students interning at the hotel handle the reception, cleaning and management of the rooms.
Due to constant visits by foreign guests of the College of Foreign Languages, hotel staff members are constantly exposed to foreigners, providing yet another challenge.
Students in the department also learn how to roast coffee beans and make coffee for the university’s various establishments that sell coffee products.
However, the university’s best-known intern store is the food science department’s ice cream shop, which offers “100 percent natural” confections without any additives or food coloring.
Vanilla and chocolate are the only flavors usually available, but the shop promotes special flavors during the school’s anniversary each year.
It sells more than 800 cones in the summer season and sometimes sees less than 100 cones sold in winter, with the best record being 4,000 cones sold during one of the school’s anniversary celebration events.
Fu Jen said it has recently begun promoting boxed ice cream and is seeking partnerships with off-campus stores to further its brand.
Student Liu Chien-yu (劉千瑜), who interned as the shop’s deputy manager last year, said she left the job knowing how to manage a store.
The most difficult thing she had done during her time as an intern at the store was to come up with special flavors for the school’s anniversary.
The two flavors of ice cream that were such a sensation at the 2013 university anniversary celebrations — rose salt red tea latte flavor and lemon dragon fruit — were the product of two or three months of hard work and the students working at the store were proud of themselves at the results of the sales, she said.
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