One of the main components of Camosun College’s Hospitality Management program takes place at Lansdowne in a heritage building originally built in 1928 as a house for the Dunlop family. Today, the Dunlop House serves as the location for a restaurant and pub managed and operated by the college’s Hospitality Management students.
Louise Remus is one of the first-year students who helps run the Thursday pubs at the Dunlop House; different classes host the pubs on different weeks. The classes choose themes and each student handles a different role for the pub night; Remus is in charge of marketing.
“For our next theme, we’re doing ‘A Night in Hollywood.’ I’m doing the marketing for it, arranging the decorations, and figuring out activities for people to do when they come,” she says. “We also have to transform the Dunlop House into an area that fits the theme.”
Remus says that to bring that theme to the Dunlop House, the team has to start very early on Thursday to get things ready.
“We completely transform it,” she says. “We reorganize all the tables in the Dunlop House and put up all the decorations. It’s a classic Hollywood black-and-red theme. We are also going to have some great food options. We have two appetizers, a burger, and a pizza, and a dessert of tiramisu.”
Remus says that her group members in the program created all the ideas for the food, which is completely unique to the pub.
“We also have our bar menu—our cocktails and our mocktails,” she says. “These were also created by another student who came up with them to fit the Hollywood theme as well. We come up with these ideas together, because when we collaborate, we can fully bring our themes to life.”
Camosun Hospitality, Tourism and Golf Management instructor Brad Boisvert’s class runs the Dunlop House restaurant. Boisvert says that the work the students do is instrumental in preparing them for when they graduate and enter the service industry.
“It’s true hands-on applied learning for the students,” says Boisvert. “Our hope is that when they get out there and are in a co-op, that they have an understanding of what goes on. It’s getting them ready for the industry; getting them ready for the work force.”
Boisvert says that the experience in the restaurant plus the practice in management training is a good step toward future employment.
“The restaurant itself is a vehicle to teach the applied learning of management skills,” he says.
Remus acknowledges that while working to make these pub nights happen is enjoyable, it can also be difficult.
“It’s definitely fun, but it is really stressful. It’s a lot of work,” she says. “I didn’t know how much work I was getting into when we started.”
Remus practiced for the themed pub night by volunteering on other nights at the Dunlop House.
“I volunteered last week at the pub, so I got to see how it works, how it meshes,” she says. “So I know that when it’s my night it will be a lot of fun, but leading up to it is definitely very stressful.”
Coming up with the themes for pub nights is also a collaboration between the students, says Remus.
“When we first come up with a theme, we consult with our groups, and we try to think of what would work well with students as well as the teachers, because we do get a lot of teachers who come as well,” she says. “So, what would suit both demographics? What would be more interactive? What might be easier to pull off and transform the Dunlop House into?”
Remus wants other students to realize how much these pub nights mean to the people who create them and how attending them will support fellow students.
“We want to make sure that people have a fun time,” says Remus. “Dunlop House isn’t something that most students even know about, or [they don’t know] about the pub nights that we pull off. Everything we create, we put a lot of hard work into; we want to make sure that people have fun. It’s just something that we are all very, very invested in.”