Pocket Trainer was created by understanding every pain point from the perspective of Janos Laszlo, a Food and Beverage veteran and the visionary behind Pocket Trainer. Having accumulated over 15 years of experience in the Food and Beverage industry, Janos has seen it most! He has gained his robust perspective through wearing every possible hat within the industry, from food runner, waiter, bartender, event organizer, club manager, and Corporate Trainer. Laszlo has hosted some of the most renowned names in the world. He saw exactly what is needed to provide the best experience for clients from all over the world. He has laid down service foundations for leading brands, curated training for 7 different departments, helped open 7 different successful restaurants across 5 countries, and won ‘Best Restaurant’ titles 29 times within the last 10 years with his teams.
When it comes to his passion, it boils down to one thing—being of service. He aims to give back to his beloved Food and Beverage colleagues by sharing his deep knowledge and experience. He has been making notes on what ‘better’ looks like within the industry throughout his career. He also noted how to equip his colleagues with the tools needed to provide excellent service to clientele and guests while managing the disconnections between management and staff. Today these notes are the foundation of Pocket Trainer. Holistically improving the image of your company by being forward-thinking in saving time, money, and paper through Pocket Trainer, and also by enhancing and streamlining information for your greatest asset, ‘your people’
Mr. Janos Laszlo , what are your goals?
We envision bringing both hospitality managers and employees closer together. We aim to keep all information streamlined. We put a central focus on a user-friendly yet affordable interface from the convenience that fits in your pocket on your smartphone.
Pocket Trainer was born to make life easier and provide solutions for the Food and Beverage industry challenges. We aim to solve the everyday challenges of F&B employees.
What is the biggest strength of yourself/company according to you right now?
We are communicating on a millennials’ standard. Our training solution is the most user-friendly on the market, centralizing all daily training, communication & resource needs of a Food and beverage organization.
What was the path you/your company took to get to where you are today?
Our unique perspective from seeing and feeling the ‘floor,’ having years of experience and growth within the rank of highly successful organizations, allows us to deliver on our promise to everyday F&B managers and staff alike. As a group of experts or professionals having experienced many different challenges within our industry, we decided to develop an application to improve the future of learning.
Why did you start (or wanted to be the head of) this company?
I got the idea while serving as a global training and development manager for a leading hospitality group. About four years ago, I thought of moving all our training-related communications to a digital platform for purely economic reasons.
I couldn’t bear to see printing so much paper that was not even engaging our employees and wanted to save time and resources for the organization. Furthermore, I wanted to speed up the learning curve of employees.
The first version of Pocket Trainer was born from an actual need rather than a business idea. It was a huge success, apart from achieving all the mentioned, our staff turnover rate declined by 110%, which was genuinely shocking at the time and yet an outstanding achievement.
Seeing and understanding the impact of moving to a digital platform, I started to design a much more comprehensive version of the app until an investor found me adoring the idea, so Pocket Trainer App was born.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As many different industries can agree, the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t help. Many businesses face challenges daily and try to recover financially from what the past 18 months have presented us.
While we are truly designed to help businesses generate a better profit from human resources while saving significantly on operational costs, it is still an “expense” to many companies. Yet, we see many instead call it an investment.
Give us one word that describes you the best.
What makes you excited about Mondays?
A New week, with many new opportunities!
Our development team works incredibly hard and shows something original every Monday. Hence it’s my favorite day of the week. Pocket Trainer is my baby, and I have true pleasure seeing it grow as my pride and joy.
What do you value most about your culture and vision?
I was lucky enough to work for some truly inspiring industry leaders during my career. They made me understand that talking about money and revenue will not bring the desired financial results.
I was taught to focus and engage with people rather than numbers, help people develop and grow without jealousy, and to provide the resources without expecting anything back, and it worked.
I carried the best values with me that I also used to grow my business. It’s not about me; it’s about them. The great people in hospitality work much harder than most can ever imagine; I strive to change that mentality.
Janos Laszlo, Tell us about a project that forced you to be innovative and creative.
Change is enormously constant within the food and beverage industry—changes in recipes, training standards, and the ever-changing menu items, and not to forget personnel.
Keeping up with all of these deviations efficaciously and efficiently can be both time-consuming and costly. My colleagues and I spent hours in the office, working on processes that we are not highly skilled at, like graphic design and content creation of training materials. Most of the time, they were way too often out of our league.
Then we saw the logistic issues of distributing training materials. People in hospitality are working on different shifts. It was pretty impossible to monitor and let staff know about significant changes, so I decided to develop a platform for businesses to share information without any computer skills required.
What are the strategies of your company Janos Laszlo, and how do they stand unique from your competitors?
For one, we are only focusing on the F&B sector. In my experience, when you want to please everyone, you please no one. We do not want to be another LMS (Learning Management System) system but focus on the industry we know and love. Our fundamental principles to capture the market are simple;
1. To be user-friendly
2. Have complete control from your mobile or tablet and,
3. To share all information in real-time.
Janos Laszlo What are the key values which helped you to overcome the roadblocks/challenges in your career? Tell us something about your memorable incident in your leadership?
Key values: Consistency, human focus, and a solution-orientated mindset.
The most memorable incident?
Once I was in charge of a restaurant pop-up in India’s most prestigious hotel, The Taj Mahal Palace. The average age of our waiters was 70 years old, and I remember presenting the team “the procedure” on how they will have the standard met.
One of the gentlemen, Patrick, who was the headwaiter of the team for 52 years, told me in front of everyone: “Janos, on the day you need to teach me how to do my job, please open the window, and I’ll jump.”
It was a matter of laugher, obviously! Instead of getting upset, I decided to work by their side the entire service, ensuring that I performed to the highest standards. Credit was earned, and our relationship changed right away; we became excellent friends from that “incident” onwards.
How do you see the company changing in two years, and how do you see yourself creating that change?
Humans don’t like changes, but I think change is vital to stay in business. I don’t want to set the company’s direction in stone, and while I’m here to show the path to my people, I’m open to change and adoption as much as necessary.
Our clientele needs primarily drive us. Therefore we only can succeed if we create value for our end users, which requires us to listen and act upon.
Where is your leadership going Janos Laszlo? What benefits do your clients are getting from your company in this competitive world?
We have the flexibility and a customer-focused mindset. We don’t encourage lengthy contracts nor hidden fees. Instead, we listen to the needs and challenges of each of our clients and develop custom-made solutions,
What services/solutions or products does your company offer as per the current industry standards? Tell us something about your upcoming products or services?
Our module portfolio covers all the daily training and communication needs of any given restaurant and bar; the app is designed to address the everyday challenges of managers within the Food and Beverage industry. Allowing managers to create, curate, and share in-house data or information on food, beverage, and service standards (like standard operation procedures, food, cocktails, and wine descriptions), we tend to help them. Just as assisting teams to monitor performance, organize tasks and training, track attendances, raise awareness of company news, roll out quizzes, and the list goes on. Our current focus is to extend our services with training materials and videos, as we have had many requests. We are also working on two new modules; micro-lessons and an onboarding guide.
Visit website pockettrainer.app