About Elena

Elena Tikhonova is an entrepreneur, active business owner, investor and foodtech expert with more than 19 years of experience in food production, FMCG and consumer products. She currently leads Broccopizza (opens in a new tab) S.L. in Barcelona — a foodtech company producing vegetable-based frozen pizza bases — runs a consulting practice serving food manufacturers across Spain, the EU and the EAEU, and is founding FoodTech Systems (opens in a new tab) Ltd. as an Astana Hub resident in Astana: a SaaS Learning Management System for the food industry.

She has hands-on experience managing food production at every scale — from 50 m² pilot lines to industrial facilities of up to 22,000 m² with complete cold-chain, packaging and logistics infrastructure. As CEO of Decorator LLC (2012–2016) she was responsible for production planning, raw material procurement, technology adoption, quality-control systems, and the introduction of ERP and digital production-planning tools.

Between 2016 and 2023 she built a portfolio of healthy-food brands from scratch — Smart Mammy (blast-frozen baby food), Fit O’Clock (plant-based frozen cutlets) and Vita-Pizza — launching more than 70 SKUs across frozen food, baby food, plant-based and gluten-free categories.

Elena works fluently across two regulatory systems: the European framework (EU 178/2002, EU 852/2004, IFS Food, BRC, EFSA guidelines) for clients in Spain and the EU, and the EAEU framework (TR CU 021/2011, HACCP, ISO 22000, GOST) for manufacturers in Russia and Kazakhstan. Her consulting practice covers food safety system implementation, production-process optimisation, product development, staff training and market entry strategy.