Café TBD

A new year means a new café. Many changes have been made to this big part of the Alsion community—beyond just the name. Read about the café’s new goals and delicious new food!

Written By Taran, Adi, and Hiren

The café has been a part of the Alsion community, providing cooked meals and snacks for years. Former café employee Moksh says the café has been around for  “decades / centuries even.” 

In previous years, the café sold a wide range of snacks, meals, and beverages. However, this year, Mr. John has opted for a simplified menu, with the rationale to serve healthy, fresh food. This cut down on many options, such as instant ramen and Martinelli’s. The café instead reverted to cooking food with a simplified and healthy menu of hot dogs, hamburgers, and veggie burgers, along with many other healthy snacks.

This shift to making food fresh for the café has been greatly successful. Former café chef Duronto Pablo said that “Working in the café as a tenth grader was okay. The dry snacks part was pretty consistent, but when it came to cooking orders, they were scarce and it basically came down to using the oven . . . Business was slow most days.” With the new changes in the café, there seem to be many more customers on grill days. On non-grill days, many customers purchase snacks such as gatorade, which have been a bestseller.

In previous years, the café used Saberchat for payments, where a customer would add money to the system which would be deducted upon purchase. The café has now been changed back to a cash system, with many customers preferring the traditional method of payment. Going back to cash has reportedly made it easier for both customers and café workers.

The cafe’s menu

Originally, the café was called No Left Turn Here. The origin of this name seems to have been lost in time, and was originally planned on being changed into something more meaningful. Coincidentally, No Left Turn was also the name of an organization which aimed to prevent a “left turn” in the education system and avoid the “indoctrination” of students. This previous name had associations with it that would rather be avoided. We had planned to rename the cafe before the launch date, but it is still to be determined.

This new school year brought many changes to the cafe. It brought forward an interesting name change and a new and improved menu with the goal of providing tasty and healthy meals and snacks to the students of Alsion. The café has been quite successful so far, especially with middle school students, and it’s only improving.