JOHN LAPORTE

John Laporte is a customer centric technology leader with 30+ years’ experience leading the technology teams for many restaurant verticals. His experience ranges from QSR and Fast Casual to Family and Casual Dining to Full Service and Fine Dining. Understanding each brand has a culture, a unique service model and a place in the market are key to understanding how technology can play an important part. This should not only optimize and streamline operations but preserve or enhance the guest experience. John is someone who knows how to build world class teams, leverage key vendor partners, and complete important projects, all within allotted timeframes and budgets. A highly collaborative leader that understands that he needs to listen more than he talks and always communicate clearly at all levels of the organization. 

A hands-on executive, John started his career as a field engineer and worked his way up to CIO. Leading technology teams from various companies, John’s biggest satisfaction has been from watching his teams grow through the experiences and challenges they faced together. Solutions that are built on the collaboration of technology talent and restaurant business stakeholders are incredibly successful. He is an advocate of digital transformation; however, transformation can create tremendous disruptions in the business, and if implemented incorrectly, without consideration for existing processes or proper training and support, can be disastrous.  Therefore, when transforming an organization with new technology implementations, it is as important to know what you are fixing as much as what you might be breaking. Thorough testing and review are needed before changes should be rolled into the subsequent deployment phases and approval given by our primary customer, our restaurant manager.