CMB Restaurants is Haaga-Helia's Partner of the Year 2022

Haaga-Helia's annual Partner Evening was held at the Haaga campus. During the evening, partner companies had the opportunity to network and hear company presentations, the results of the image survey and the launch of the new partner model.

The evening culminated with the announcement of CMB Restaurants as Partner of the Year and Mariitta Rauhala as Partner Manager of the Year.

CMB Restaurants is a restaurant group with 150 employees, 16 locations and five separate limited companies. CMB Restaurants include for example Junky Vegan, Sävel Restaurants, Santa Fé Lahti, Bar Loose & Loosister and Restaurant Maya. The group also includes an accountancy firm which provides payroll services to the companies in the group.

The collaboration between Haaga-Helia and CMB Restaurants started out of a shared interest and passion for the development of the restaurant industry. During this cooperation, CMB Restaurants has participated in Haaga-Helia's activities by giving guest lectures, assigning courses and providing opportunities for both Bachelor and Master students to work on their theses. The company has also purchased services from Haaga-Helia's creative agency Krea, presented its activities at the Haaga campus and participated in recruitment fairs.

CMB Restaurants has recruited staff from Haaga-Helia students, and sharing up-to-date information on working life and commissioning work-related assignments has helped in recruiting new employees. Students have also been offered internships and teachers have been given an up-to-date view of the restaurant sector.

– The cooperation has been flexible and mutually beneficial. In the future, we will continue to develop CMB's current business models and provide the company with the insights of a younger generation. Recruitment objectives will also be promoted. We hope that the cooperation will continue to be meaningful and evolve in the future, says Partner Manager of the Year, Mariitta Rauhala of Haaga-Helia.

Maarit Karjalainen, Restaurant Manager of CMB Restaurants, says that the cooperation has resulted in great success stories even amidst the challenges of the pandemic. The successful cooperation has been enabled by a systematic approach and the establishment of an annual calendar.

– Mariitta has been a great contact person and together we have had a great spirit of working together, says Karjalainen.

During the year, Haaga-Helia's students did several final theses as assignments for CMB Restaurants. The work has been useful for CMB Restaurants and the students have also received good grades. The topics of the works have been, for example, the model of financial reward for customer service staff, which has been introduced this year, and also the model of development discussion, which is still being worked on and will be introduced in the near future.

– The next master's thesis presentation on Junky Vegan's carbon footprint is scheduled for December, and I'm already looking forward to seeing the results, says Karjalainen.

Karjalainen has also visited the campus to lecture on CMB's internal accounting, business ideas and service models.

– Meeting an entire class at once gave a bright outlook for the future of our industry as we struggle with staff shortages. It was great to meet enthusiastic, inquisitive and interested people, Karjalainen sums up.