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Hospitality Facilities

VIU has excellent on-site facilities for superior Hospitality Management training. In demonstrations and training we use the Discovery Dining Room This is a true fine-dining destination with a strong following in the local community. Patrons are drawn to the fabulous cuisine and the fabulous view over Georgia Strait.

In addition, we have:

  • The Arbutus Room where catered events are hosted (http://www.viu.ca/foodservices/catering/index.html)
  • A technically advanced Teaching Kitchen
  • A Kitchen & full-service Cafeteria Lab (http://www.viu.ca/foodservices/cafeteria/index.html)
  • A Front Office simulation lab, and a computer lab

Our small classes (1 section) allow personal attention from instructors and camaraderie among students.

The Discovery Dining Room

The Discovery Room is a 36-seat fully licensed fine dining facility that is operated at lunch by professional staff, and by Hospitality students on weekday evenings for dinner as a Management Lab. The view is unbeatable, of the city below, of Georgia Strait, and on a clear day the Coast Mountains of B.C.’s mainland, complete with the lights of the North Shore ski hills.

First-year Hospitality students rotate through all restaurant staff positions, working one day per week, and are trained and supervised by Second-year Hospitality students. This hands-on management experience for senior students has proven invaluable for most graduates to be immediately supervisory-ready in the industry. Students in VIU’s Culinary Arts Program work side-by-side providing the food production component of the Lab.

The Front Office Computer Lab

The “Inn Control Training School” is a simulation software package for a 45 room hotel with a variety of rates and packages. The Hotel offers a Restaurant, Lounge, Bistro Bar and Banquet facilities. The simulation exercise takes students through the stages of the guest cycle: Reservations, Registration, Occupancy and Departure, completing practice sessions similar to what would occur at the front desk of a hotel.

Food Lab

Students in VIU’s Culinary Arts Program are working in Canada’s most state-of-the-art teaching kitchen. The “Food Lab” is equipped with 18 student work-stations equipped with the latest technology. Each student has use of a Swiss-made Garland induction burner and a set of aluminum-bottom stainless steel pots and pans that are designed as induction-ready cookware. Each pair of stations share a mixer, food processor, induction wok, gas burner, and flat-top burner between them as well as two grills, salamanders, and deep-fryers. There are two convection ovens and the jewel of the kitchen is the Eloma-Hardt Combination Oven. The refrigerated Instructor podium has the same equipment as the students plus six cameras above the work-station that feed a “real-time” image to the students as the instructor demonstrates.

Second-year Hospitality Management students receive food production demonstrations in this facility, and go on to manage and work in a weekly Food Service Management Lab. This lab is one of the program’s “capstone” courses, in that it brings together all learning to date in a realistic business operation, complete with real product, real service, and real guests in a family-style restaurant.