Earning Trust With Food & Beverage Experience: Meet Arryved’s Industry Experts

Meet just a few of the industry experts at Arryved and learn how their backgrounds impact their jobs today.

Level Up with Arryved Meet the Arryved Family

Earning trust in the food and beverage industry is no small feat. It requires security, transparency, and a commitment to learning from your customers. 

Arryved is the most trusted POS in the industry for all of the reasons above. But it’s also due to our team’s previous experience as Servers, Bussers, Executive Chefs, Owners, Bartenders, and more. In fact, 77% of the Arryved team has worked in food and beverage before!

Meet just a few of the industry experts at Arryved and learn how their backgrounds impact their jobs today:

Meet Rachel:

Former Executive Chef & Arryved’s Solutions Engineer

Rachel started as an Executive Chef at just 25 years old and ran vegetable-forward kitchens in Boulder and New York City before a 6-year stint at WaterCourse Foods in Denver. She’s managed kitchens of 3 to 40+ people and worked with 24-hour preparation schedules, demonstrating Rachel’s knowledgeable range in the food industry. 

Part of what Rachel loved about being an Executive Chef was her relationships with local farmers as well as the camaraderie in the kitchen with individuals from all kinds of backgrounds. Rachel also relished using her creativity to mix up menus as the seasons changed since her dishes were so dependent on fresh produce.

A couple career highlights? Rachel developed Colorado’s first vegan cheese board, and one of her favorite plates to make was beet risotto with goat cheese, beet chips, and roasted tomato confit. 

Rachel Encourages Data Driven Menu Decisions

As Arryved’s Solutions Engineer, Rachel helps identify growth opportunities for Arryved customers. Because she spent many years in the shoes of a chef, she knows how important experimental dishes are to a kitchen’s creative desires. Data determines a particular dish’s performance which informs menu needs and improves guest satisfaction!

Rachel reinforces the importance of data driven decisions in the kitchen and points to specific Arryved reports that help busy owners determine their best sellers and dictate what’s served in the future. 

Meet Bill:

Bill Nick, Senior Growth Rep at Arryved

RESTAURANT OWNER & ARRYVED’S SENIOR GROWTH SPECIALIST

Bill previously worked as the General Manager of Aspen Brewing Co.’s restaurant and taphouse. During his time there, the business redesigned their brand, rebuilt their space, rolled out a new menu, hired all new staff, and onboarded a new POS system. The role was Bill’s first hands-on experience in management—he’s spent his entire career in other service roles in food and bev—and instead of scaring him away, Bill opened his own restaurant.

Blue Box Seafood Company is Oregon’s only boat-to-table restaurant, serving the freshest seafood right on the coast of where it came from. The team works directly with local fishermen, so relationships and seasonality drive all of their operations

Blue Box is known for its Dungeness Crab Roll. A play on the East Coast’s lobster rolls, the dish showcases Oregon’s prize possession of the sea and adds the signature seasoning, lemon, and buttery roll your taste buds dream of. 

Bill Relates To Business Owners Hectic Schedules & Ongoing Challenges

Bill and his partners opened Blue Box in the summer of 2021, making COVID restrictions one of many challenges Bill can empathize with Arryved customers about. He relates to celebrating high points and navigating day-to-day challenges, making Bill a trustworthy problem solver for other business owners. 

“I’ve been there and I know the challenges, so I’m able to relate to them as owners and find solutions that actually matter as far as saving time and money,” Bill shares. 

What better person to help find a POS that meets all of your most important needs?

Meet LJ:

Laura LJ Jansen

BAKER, BUSINESS OWNER, & ARRYVED’S UX DESIGNER

LJ’s formal dessert-making journey started during a college internship at a bakery in Mississippi. She did everything from midnight shifts shaping dough loaves to cake filling and decorating. 

Still in college, LJ began to get that bread herself by starting a solo business baking cakes and other desserts for birthday parties and weddings. In the small community of Oxford, word of mouth spread quickly among church members and family friends. You can see one of LJ’s favorite creations below of a newly 11-year-old’s Eleven-themed cake!

LJ learned to scale her production efforts later on working for a catering business and restaurant group, where she was whipping up everything from high-end crème brûlée to ice cream and brownies. 

LJ Designs Based On Needs Versus Assumptions

Due to LJ’s experience interacting with clients, she learned to bake and design desserts based on their specific needs, including the venue temperature!

As Arryved’s resident UX Designer, LJ focuses on usability and accessibility to validate new products, and knows to prioritize customer needs instead of making assumptions. LJ’s baking background informs her design process by listening, testing, and designing with customers in mind. 

MEET Hugo:

Hugo Tournier pouring beer into a glass

SERVICE GURU, FORMER BARISTA, & ARRYVED’S PRODUCT SUPPORT SPECIALIST

Hugo is a self-proclaimed computer nerd and lover of people. He has a plethora of experience in customer-facing roles spanning from cars to coffee, and his belief that customer service is the primary pillar to the success of any given business has only grown stronger

Hugo’s time at Starbucks really highlighted how important establishing trust is to relationship-building. He still recalls Trish and a coffee order so complicated with temperature and foam requests that it could be on an SNL skit. Hugo quickly knew her name and order by heart and would have it ready before she even got to the register. 

He credits his location’s success to that careful attention to detail and earning the trust that each drink would be customized correctly. The meaningful relationships Hugo built at Starbucks led to more engagement and brand loyalty.

Hugo Earns Trust With Customers To Help Scale Their Businesses

The Product Support role at Arryved gave Hugo the opportunity to combine his love of technology with his passion for people. Going above and beyond in every customer interaction is core to Arryved’s ethos, and Hugo’s background and dedication to doing just that is abundantly evident.

“If there’s something that we need, we just ask. 9 times out of 10, even if it’s something that you can’t do right now, you take it up the ladder and see what you can do. It’s never just ‘no’. The peace of mind of having a partner that you trust can only help your business grow, and that’s what I feel like with Arryved,” Todd Evans,  Co-Owner at Diskin Cider, says of his interactions with the Support Team.

And while the tooting horn is still hot, Arryved’s Support Team recently won a Silver Stevie Award for Sales & Customer Service, which is their second honor in the prestigious category. 

Meet Alanna:

FORMER BREWERY MARKETING DIRECTOR & ARRYVED’S MANAGER OF CUSTOMER SUCCESS – ECOMMERCE

Alanna was hired as a server for the opening team at Wicked Weed Brewing and spent 8 years there growing her craft career in various roles. She led the brewery and restaurant as the Assistant General Manager before eventually running events as the Marketing Director.

Having built relationships with both guests and staff in Wicked Weed’s taproom gave Alanna some street creds when she began working in the corporate office. She knew the hard work that went on in the taproom because she lived it, which established mutual respect among her coworkers. 

Alanna organized the Funkatorium Invitational for 3 years, a festival that welcomed all sour beer crafters to Asheville to celebrate pucker-inducing brews and benefit local causes. Alanna began planning each Invitational 11 months in advance, starting with getting all 80 breweries TTB registered to legally pour in North Carolina. 

A behind the scenes look at projects Alanna led for Wicked Weed: Above is an immersive booth they hosted for Anheuser Busch and the Passionfruit Lychee Burst photoshoot.

Alanna’s Fluency In Craft Helps Customers Build Brand Awareness Online

Alanna found that moving from the craft industry into tech gave her that same credibility among Arryved Ecommerce customers. Her ability to speak the same language and empathize with the challenges she’s also faced enables Alanna to quickly identify the capabilities that busy Owners and Marketing leaders need to build brand awareness online. 

 “I was stoked to find an industry-specific company that understood our niche needs regarding customer interaction, connection, and accessibility. After speaking with your team, I realized y’all really understood our business and our customers, ultimately making you a perfect partner for us,” says Alicia Fortino from Orpheus Brewing. “In the past, we’ve had some rough experiences with non-industry-specific companies and it was absolutely a breath of fresh air to work with y’all.”

Our Ecommerce Team’s advanced web solutions possess the flexibility that all craft-forward tools require in order to keep up with a constantly evolving industry, in part because of Alanna and team’s background.

Arryved supports the makers of good food and bev, because we’ve lived it and we love it. Get a customized demo of the most trusted POS in the industry! 

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