Go To Market Programme ManagerLaura Vana

Tell us a little about your background in hospitality? 

Before joining Mapal, I worked around 3 years in an upmarket restaurant group in Estonia as the head of research and development. I was wearing a lot of hats in that role, one of which was about innovating and digitizing our business. This means I was choosing restaurant technology solutions which would make the lives of our employees easier. In addition, I also spent some time in the kitchen developing new techniques and recipes for our restaurants as well as helped on the floor to understand all of the aspects of our business. Thanks to this I am very familiar with how hospitality businesses operate and I can use this in my role at the marketing team today.  

What attracted you to working at MAPAL Group? 

During my past role as the head of R&D I came across many solutions like we have, however, none of them were as complex and useful as Flow Learning or Workforce management solution. It would’ve made my life so much easier if our restaurants had already been clients of MAPAL. I also like to be part of a team that think big and has ambitious plans- all of which MAPAL offers :) 

Additionally, I am happy that in my role as brand awareness and advocacy manager I can combine my experience in hospitality as well as my experience in technology sector where I have worked in a business development role.  

From your experience within hospitality what would you say were the top benefits of using software solutions are? 

Saving the managers time is a big benefit. Take Flow Learning for example. I used to run monthly classroom trainings on food safety at my previous role which I had created from scratch myself. With Flow I could have simply used their off-the-shelf modules and then check how the team complied.  

What projects are you working on at the moment? 

The past months our team has had our hands full with the company rebranding project. We’re creating a brand new website that combines all of our businesses and launch it at the same time as our new unified branding across all businesses. We’re at the final weeks now and I’m already super excited to shout about it to the whole world. I’m sure everyone’s going to love it! :)