Skills and thrills: METRO’s Customer Academy is about to open

Next to the Budaörs METRO store the chain’s Customer Academy will open in October. The Customer Academy’s head of department Piroska Balestra shared the details with readers of our magazine. By establishing the train­ing centre METRO Hungary’s goal was to provide professional partners with knowledge and information. The initiative is not new: METRO already opened similar academies in several other countries. Training programmes will include bartender and barista courses, courses on wine tasting, chefs’ trainings on Hungaricums, Italian cuisine or salt- and freshwater fish. For retail partners courses will be dealing with HACCP, shop furnishing, product display, pric­ing and legal requirements (Category Implementation and Merchandising and Assortment and inventory optimisation).

The Academy will boast a show kitchen, a 24-seater auditorium and a 30- seater restaurant with a lobby and a bar. For retailers a tarder shop will be set up and the building will house a 120- seater conference room as well. Kálmán Kalla and Alessandro Arena will lead the cooking programmes. Anyone can participate in the courses, but METRO’s customer oriented individually set pricing. The Customer Academy’s website HYPERLINK “http://www.vevoakademia.hu” www.vevoakademia.hu will be launched in October; the educational centre itself will of­ficially open during the Hoventa (19-22 October).