Patton High School opens Claws Cafe

When the bell rang at lunchtime, droves of hungry students piled into Patton High School’s cafeteria, some beelining for food, others for their friends. A handful, though, stopped at the new cafe that is just through the doors.

Claws Cafe officially opened on Monday in Patton’s cafeteria, giving students a place to purchase specialty coffee drinks, pastries, muffins, and some food items like salads and calzones.

School meals are free, said Child Nutrition and Marketing Specialist Bethany Duncan, but the items sold at Claws Cafe are an additional treat.

“It’s like buying ice cream when we were kids,” said Child Nutrition Director Daniel Wall.

Everything served as a school meal and cafe treat meets all current child nutrition requirements from the USDA, Duncan said.

The cafeteria looked less like a classic school cafeteria and more like a food court with its lively colors and stations for various foods. Wall said that is by design.

“Since we came back from COVID … we wanted to revolutionize the way child nutrition looked in the high schools,” Wall said. “We wanted to go to more of an airport kiosk (look). More modern, more things that kind of meet kids where they’re at and move away from the institutionalized sitting in rows (and) stale paint colors.”

With some brainstorming, the child nutrition department came up with the idea to create cafes in the high schools.

The first cafe was at East Burke High School. It was called Starburkes initially, then School Beans, before landing on Cavalier Grind, a reference to the school’s mascot.

Claws Cafe, similarly, references Patton’s panther mascot.

Both Cavalier Grind and Claws Cafe were named by the students.

“They come up with the names, and we let them vote on the ones that are most appropriate because they’ll have some kind of shady names,” Wall said, adding that students will have a hand in choosing the names of signature drinks as well. “Because when the kids participate, then you know they will come and purchase.”

Wall said the goal is to have cafes in each high school as part of the ongoing effort to move away from bland cafeterias.

“(We want) kids see it less like lunch food and more like an experience,” Wall said. “We want to feed every kid that we can every day, because when kids aren’t hungry … they do better in school.”

Principal Dr. Ross Rumbaugh said he is excited about Claws Cafe, and that he heard positive reviews from students about the pastries on Monday.