Restaurant Manager Resume Example

Here is how to write your own version, and what a manager does with it during a five-minute gap between services.

How hiring works in this role

Restaurant manager interviews are commercial from the first question: sales volume, labour percentage, food cost and how you would react to a week that misses budget. Expect a working interview or a shift observation at independent sites, and multiple rounds with an area manager at groups. Health inspection history and how you have handled a serious staff issue come up almost every time.

What a manager checks first

The first pass happens fast, often standing up between services. A manager is looking for the shifts you can cover and the volume you are used to, because those are what decide whether you solve this week's problem. A resume that hides either loses to a weaker one that states them plainly.

Volume, speed and money

Use the numbers the industry runs on: covers per service, rooms per shift, average check, transactions per hour, sales per hour, food cost percentage. If you upsold, trained new staff, held a section alone on a busy night or cut waste, those are the lines that get read. Length of service in one venue is itself an achievement here, where turnover is high.

The top of the page: availability and volume

Availability is a hiring criterion in this industry, not an administrative detail, so state it near the top along with any food safety or alcohol service certification you hold. Two lines of summary is plenty: the service style you work in, and the volume you are used to.

Mistakes that cost restaurant manager candidates interviews

• Describing duties without a single cost percentage, which reads as a shift supervisor rather than a manager
• Leaving out covers, seats or sales volume, so nobody can tell whether you have run their size of restaurant
• Claiming team leadership without headcount, when the number is the whole claim

Where this role can take you

Restaurant manager to general manager, then multi-unit or area manager and operations director. A documented turnaround - cost, guest scores or turnover - is the most portable evidence in the industry.

Before you hand it over

Many of these applications are handed over in person or filled in on a tablet in the venue, so keep the resume to one page and easy to skim in thirty seconds. Where the employer uses an online system, check the file parses cleanly with our free ATS checker.