Elora Norman

At Lolo I started with minimal experience in the service element of working in a restaurant kitchen but over the course of the last two years have become confident in all aspects of working in this environment. Lolo is a busy restaurant that serves seasonal Italian influenced food and working in the small kitchen requires knowledge of all dishes from start to finish. Working fast and under pressure is important, along with maintaining a high quality and consistency of output. This is my first non customer facing job and I have learned so much about the importance of teamwork in this role.

At Moon Juice my role was to work in retail stores selling products. Moon Juice is a very popular brand in the natural wellness area who I had long admired for their presence and style within this realm. I loved working at Moon Juice because I truly enjoyed and believed in the products which made it very easy to connect with and help customers learn about potential benefits they offered. This job was extremely education focused and we were tested and trained constantly about what the products were, sourcing, what benefits they offered, along with the company being very sales focused and using incentives to help drive us to make sales. I very much enjoyed the customer service element of this job in particular because I liked the idea that people were able to learn from me about how they could utilize products to support their own health and wellness as it is an area I am personally very passionate about! I also was frequently awarded for high sales at this job.

This company is a luxury bakery specializing in bespoke cakes and more recently a shelf product line including high end cake mixes.

This job began as a dishwashing role, I was enamored with the brand this company had achieved and became determined to work for them. I was hired initially as a dishwasher, but over the 5 year employment period, moved up to baker, and onto recipe development, and from there I was also front of house/customer liaison and then became assistant to the two co-owners of the company which included baking, ordering, scheduling, customer support, surveys, responding to enquires, writing copy etc. whatever was needed to maintain operations! I helped this company expand from their Auckland retail store to Los Angeles when they decided to enter the US market. I loved this job because I was able to offer creative input - alongside doing hands on work with baking and also maintaining online communication with customers.

My first job when I was in university was as a Barista, making coffee in cafes in Auckland. The Raw Kitchen was the first cafe I worked at where I was able to be involved in the cafe menu, and where I first discovered the wellness industry just as it was taking off. Like Moon Juice this brand was very health focused and I had been a trained barista for a few years by then so I was making espresso drinks in the cafe but also helping prepare food in the kitchen and serving it to customers. this job had a heavy educational element and the team got together frequently to be trained and tested about products and offerings and how they could function for customers as natural remedies. I really enjoyed making coffee here and eventually my job evolved to running an offsite market stall where we sold fresh food at a local market on weekend mornings.

This was one of my first sales jobs, it was still in hospitality but I learned a lot in this role. At petal we had to run the shop alone as employees which meant taking care of all incoming and outgoing orders (of which this particular company ranged from small orders to large custom corporate orders). I was a keyholder to the facility so I opened and closed the shop, took phone calls, scheduled orders for product, scheduled delivery and maintained the order calendar. This job was the first time I had been solely responsible for operations and it was a great challenge and I truly found it fun and rewarding.

I worked at a cafe/deli in one of Auckland's popular beaches. We made SO much coffee at this cafe and we also sold ice cream and bread and pastries. I loved working here and this was such a wonderful place to experience employment for the first time - being a small business and right by the beach in auckland. It was very busy and patronized by mostly locals and regulars and so all us staff had such a wonderful rapport with our customers it felt very family like and I loved our community. This job solidified my customer service skills and helped me perfect my coffee skills and I felt by, the time I left, confident of my capabilities in these areas.