Other Career Options For Restaurant Managers

What Does A Restaurant Manager Do

There are certain skills that many restaurant managers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed business skills, customer-service skills and detail oriented.

Where Do Restaurant Managers Work

Varies

There are many types of restaurants where managers are needed to organize the staff and ensure they are all working together well. Restaurant managers may also be the owners of their own restaurants, taking on additional responsibilities and duties to ensure success of the organization. Places restaurant managers work include:

-Fast food chains or franchises

-An individual restaurant in a chain

-A regional area of a chain of restaurants

-An individual boutique restaurant

What Are The Negatives

“Being a restaurant manager is a lifestyle, not a job,” says Westrom. “If are going to succeed, they will put in 50 to 80 hours per week with high stress levels at times. But once you get everything going, it can be a fun career with very good pay.”

Check out this sample resume for a restaurant manager and a sample cover letter for a restaurant manager.

Westrom suggests potential food-loving candidates consider the following:

• What type of restaurant business are you going into? There is a big difference between fine dining, family style, fast food, and a sports bar or restaurant atmosphere. These restaurants attract different employees. A fine dining establishment might draw more experienced, mature employees, while a fast-food restaurant or sports bar might interest younger ones.
• Do you want to be a floor manager, a back-of-the-house manager, or a general manager? Each of these positions requires different skills.
• When pursuing jobs, ask potential employers how long they have been in business, where they see the business growing, what opportunities exist for advancement and what type of manager-training programs they have.

“If someone wants a career in this field, try getting in with a franchise for training and a stable income,” advises Westrom. “After three to five years, you can look at a privately held restaurant where you can go in as a general manager and demand a pay of $60,000-plus for your expertise or partnership.”

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Director Of Food Services

In almost every area that involves food service, a food service or restaurant management degree might help when pursuing a move into a director position. In this role, you could be involved in defining the direction of the food services within the company including hiring staff, managing costs, and overseeing operations.

A director is expected to understand the business at a higher level than a manager, which might mean a stake in the company. If youve been in this industry for a while and really feel a directorship is your calling, this could be the step that gets you there.

Interested in a future in food service or restaurant management? ECPI University offers a year-round schedule so that you can earn your degree in less than two and a half years. Contact ECPI University for more information about earning your Bachelor of Science in Food Service Management. It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!

Chef Maia giving a great presentation on the Culinary arts program at ECPI!!

Amaris Rice

For more information about ECPI University or any of our programs click here: or .

Hospitality Management Restaurant Manager Degree Options

Majoring in an area of hospitality management can help you develop skills and experience for restaurant management. The field of hospitality management is closely related to business and may encompass areas like tourism, event management, luxury hospitality management, hotel management and restaurant management. A general hospitality major program might include classes in food and beverage management and operations, hotel management, legal aspects of hospitality and tourism, marketing for the hospitality industry, human resource management for the hospitality industry and financial accounting for the hospitality industry. In the course of earning a hospitality management degree, you will learn when and how to delegate tasks to your staff, develop the skills to make important decisions regarding the financial health of the hospitality business and gain an understanding of the most marketable trends in the food and beverage industry.

Hospitality management degree programs exist at all levels of college study, from certificates and associates degrees to four-year bachelors degrees and even graduate degrees. You can find these programs at a variety of institutions, from humble community colleges to prestigious universities.

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Employment With A Restaurant Management Education

Depending on your exact role in restaurant management and the food service establishment you work in, your position as a restaurant manager may encompass a diverse array of job responsibilities. They oversee staffing, including hiring and training new workers for all areas of the restaurants operations and scheduling shifts. They order the equipment and supplies needed for the restaurant and the food and beverage ingredients required to make the dishes. Restaurant managers are involved in administrative tasks like budgeting, payroll and employment paperwork. They also handle tasks specific to the restaurant industry, like supervising the preparation of dishes and inspecting work areas, cleaning, maintenance and kitchen practices to ensure compliance with food safety regulations.

Although their primary job is to oversee and manage the restaurants operations, rather than to prepare food and wait tables themselves, the restaurant manager is responsible for keeping things running smoothly. Good restaurant managers are willing to jump in and personally assist with tasks that include seating and serving customers, cleaning tables and processing payments. If any customer complaints arise about service or food quality, addressing the complaint and resolving the problem to the customers satisfaction are part of the restaurant managers responsibilities.

Additional Resources

Financial And Accounting Skills

While every restaurant manager wants their guests coming back for more, patrons can only return if the restaurant is still in operation! Even if a restaurant is producing delectable food and receiving rave reviews, it can still go under due to poor financial management.

Great restaurant managers understand all of the components that impact a restaurants expenses. Not only do they know how much each ingredient costs, but they also understand how to order, receive, and store ingredients so as little as possible goes to waste.

Escoffiers Hospitality and Restaurant Operations Management degree program breaks these skills down into individual courses in Cost Control and Purchasing.

Our students are taught the financial aspects of running a successful hospitality operation. Being able to apply this knowledge in the workplace can make them valued employees.

Of course, how you prepare ingredients and price menu items also has an impact on the bottom line. Thats why students also have the opportunity to take a course focusing on Menu Design and Management.

All of these skills come together during the Foodservice Math and Accounting Course, where students can dive into income statements and financial analysis.

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Do You Have The Required Skills To Become A Restaurant Manager

True to the saying, great leaders are not born they are made. You can easily acquire both the soft and hard skills you need to become a restaurant manager.

If you have been working in the hospitality industry for a while, by now you probably have the soft skills needed to become a restaurant manager. But it takes a perfect balance of the above-outlined skills to become a professional restaurant manager.

How Important Is Education

When it comes to becoming a restaurant manager, there arent any specific education requirements. While most managers have at least a high school diploma, and many have graduated college with degrees in hospitality, its not at all unheard of for someone who didnt finish high school to start at the bottom of the restaurant food chain and work their way up to management, or even own their own restaurant.

As Study.com explains, Although many restaurant managers are trained on the job and are promoted from another position, a postsecondary degree or college coursework is becoming a preference among employers. Many restaurant chains offer their own training programs.

Start training with help from our Staff Management Guide.

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Work Environment About This Section

Food service managers held about 329,100 jobs in 2021. The largest employers of food service managers were as follows:

Full-service restaurants may have a management team that includes a general manager, one or more assistant managers, and an executive chef.

Food service managers work is often hectic, and dealing with dissatisfied customers may be stressful.

Go To A Different Restaurant

We get it your boss is the worst, you dont gel with your team, nothing stays clean for long, and your commute is a lot longer than youd like. There are reasons outside your control pulling you from your job, so youve got to go. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to get out of the restaurant industry all together. Maybe it means you need to get out of the restaurant youre at?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports more than five million people work in restaurants. With such a high industry turnover rate meaning restaurants are often left with vacant positions its safe to assume there are plenty of other restaurants you can work for in your area. You may want to try working at a different restaurant concept, a different type or restaurant, or in a different neighbourhood before calling it quits all together.

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If Youre Curious About How To Get There Heres The General Restaurant Manager Career Path From The Bottom Of The Totem Pole To Management

As you move through all of these positions, youll gain the skills and experience necessary to fulfill all of your future restaurant manager duties. While starting at entry-level can be difficult, the best managers know and understand every facet of their restaurant, including how the meals get made to how the restaurant POS software works on both the front and back end. Plus, managers are often tasked with jumping into various roleseverything from prepping to bartendingon busy nights.

The best ones become that way by truly knowing how to do it all.

Hospitality Jobs In The Food And Beverage Industry

The food and beverage industry is divided into two major segments: production and the distribution of edible goods. Related to hospitality, food and beverage occupations can be found in settings such as restaurants, breweries, event centers, and more.

• Restaurant Manager To ensure the restaurant is operating efficiently, restaurant managers can be hired to oversee a variety of restaurant types from local taverns to high-end restaurants and fine-dining establishments specializing in international cuisine
• Catering Assistant A catering assistant may work directly for a catering company, in-house at a restaurant, or at a hotel to arrange bookings, oversee production and more
• Sous Chef Another job pertaining to the food and beverage industry is that of a sous chef, which is a second-in-command role within a kitchen. A sous chef reports to the head chef and oversees various meal preparations and kitchen operations

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Bar Or Service Manager

After learning the restaurant positions and functions, youll be able to move to higher level positions such as the Bar Manager or Service Manager.

In these positions, youre given the responsibility of managing small teams of employees, mentoring and training, and handling opening and closing duties to ensure the restaurant functions at its highest level.

How To Become A Restaurant Manager

With a combined focus on customer service and daily restaurant operations, restaurant managers lead restaurants toward their goals. Between balancing finances, onboarding new chefs and waitstaff, and overseeing high-level restaurant activity, the role of a restaurant manager motivates restaurant staff by example.

The restaurant industry is invigorating, yet high-paced. If youre someone who thrives in a fast-paced environment, driven by a desire to pair guests with high-quality dining, the role of a restaurant manager is right for you. During the busiest moments, your restaurant staff will look to you for leadership.

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What Is The Projected Job Growth

1%

Restaurant manager career opportunities are expected to expand from 2019 to 2029, at a growth rate of 1%. Though this approximated growth rate is slower than the average across all occupations, it is still expected to add an estimated 2,200 restaurant manager positions to the active job market.

As individuals around the world continue to enjoy the experience of dining out, there will exist a continued need for restaurant managers to ensure smooth restaurant operations. Many restaurant manager positions will be created simply by existing managers who vacate their positions.

What Does Managing A Restaurant Entail

Before we dive into exploring how to become a restaurant manager, its important to start with a clear understanding of what, exactly, it is that a restaurant manager does in the first place. It might seem like the job is easy and straightforward from the outside, or perhaps even from a servers perspective, but theres more to it than meets the eye.

Study.com also explains that restaurant managers oversee the day-to-day operations of a food service organization, including ordering food and supplies, providing customer service, managing staff and planning menus. Restaurant managers have to be both business-minded and manage operations and the budget, or risk running out of funds to keep the restaurant open. Then, theres the softer skill of customer service that requires excellent people skills to keep customers, especially the disgruntled ones, happy and ready to come back again and again. Theres also managing what can seem like an ever-evolving team of bartenders and servers, from putting the schedule together to executing performance reviews, and much in between.

If you see restaurant management as just bossing employees around and counting money at the end of the night, youre mistaken. Managing a restaurant is the blending of a deep skill set that many acquire after working their way up through all of the other positions in a restaurant that fall under the management umbrella.

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Key Skills & Qualifications For Restaurant Managers

An effective restaurant manager has a combination of personal attributes, acquired skills and the right qualification.

Restaurant management duties are diverse and challenging. On a personal level, you should be

• A quick thinker
• An effective team leader

You can become qualified on the management side or via the chef route. Or you can set up the business yourself .

Le Cordon Bleu also offers a Diploma in Culinary Management and a Culinary Management BBA degree, among other restaurant management courses.

So, even within the walls of one school, theres a range of choice. Its worth taking the time to browse these courses to find the course style and career path thats right for you.

Of course, many have gone from becoming a chef to a restaurant manager. And this journey can begin with one of our cuisine diplomas.

Restaurant Owner Education Requirements

If you want to become a restaurateur, your best bet is to start out by pursuing the education of a chef. Youre going to need culinary skills to get started working as a chef in established restaurants and to eventually develop the expertise needed to design a menu and prepare the dishes at your own restaurant. Culinary arts programs are offered at specialized culinary arts schools, but they also exist at technical schools, community colleges and four-year colleges.

In a culinary arts degree program, you can expect to start your studies with coursework in culinary fundamentals, including food safety, sanitation, food product identification, ingredient pairing, palate development, culinary math and knife skills. Students in a culinary arts program learn about the cooking of different dishes and ingredients, including meat, poultry, seafood, soups, sauces, salads, sandwiches, vegetables, grains, hors doeuvres and appetizers. Culinary arts students learn and practice a variety of cooking methods, including dry-heat cooking skills like grilling, roasting, frying and sautéing, as well as moist-heat cooking methods like braising, stewing and steaming. They learn to bake and prepare a variety of classic and contemporary desserts as well as to cook a variety of regional dishes, including Italian, French and Asian dishes.

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Ask For More Training And Resources

Less than 60% of restaurants provide new hires with training manuals, while less than 50% of restaurants offer a training or orientation session. You may feel frustrated and like youre not doing your job to the fullest if you were not adequately prepared or did not receive a clear set of expectations from your boss.

See if your manager has or is willing to invest in a training programs or documentation that outlines the responsibilities, processes and expectations of your job, this way you know when and where youre falling short, and what to focus on to improve.

You could also ask to spend some time shadowing other employees or managers to see how they do their jobs and ask them how you might change things up to do yours better.

A Job As A Restaurant Manager Could Be More Than A Meal Ticket It Might Be A Way To Season Your Resume

How To Become A Restaurant Manager

Whenever Jerry Westrom interviews a candidate for restaurant manager job, he talks about all the negatives surrounding the position before going into greater detail about the positives. Knowing how to become a restaurant manager takes a lot of work and effort.

“I need to know their heart is in it, that they are truly committed,” says Westrom, who owns an Ember’s Restaurant in Cambridge, Minnesota. “If they seem skeptical about anything, I don’t know if they will make it”

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