Stunning Food Service Resume Examples for This Year

Updated August 24, 2022747

Many job titles and team members fall under the term “food service.” Here are a few tips to help you create a better food service resume.

Food Service Resume Examples

The term food service includes anyone and everyone who works in food. This includes a waiter serving entrees, a minimum-wage McDonald’s worker and a franchise manager. No matter which job title you hold, here’s how you can use food service resume samples to create a great food service resume.

How To Create An Eye-Catching But Traditional Resume

What To Highlight in a Food Service Resume

Above all, a food service worker's resume requires excellent customer service skills. Regardless of your food service experience, the most important thing you can do is indicate that you can thrive in a work environment largely based on helping customers get their food, feel satisfied and leave.

Structure of a Food Service Resume

Your first step is to decide on the resume format that works best for your situation. Your options are the chronological resume, which emphasizes your experience, the functional resume that showcases your skills and the combination resume, which highlights skills and work history. From there, you can load these resume sections into the ResumeNerd resume builder.

Header

Your resume header includes your contact information. Include your phone number, email address, and any professional social media links, like your LinkedIn profile.

Resume summary or objective

A two- to three-sentence paragraph at the very top of your resume allows you to highlight key points of your resume. A resume summary is best for people with more experience. It highlights your best accomplishments and indicates how you’ve used your skills in the past. A resume objective is best for people with less experience as it highlights your skills and knowledge, then shows how you can use them.

Skills

Your skills section for any resume should include both soft skills, which are general skills you use in your daily life and hard skills, which are technical skills you learned specifically for this job. Here are a few bullet points you can consider adding to your food service skills list:

Food preparation
Cash register/POS knowledge
Multitasking
Communication skills
Time management skills
Customer satisfaction
Customer service skills
Work in a fast-paced environment
Interpersonal skills
Problem-solving skills
Safe food handling knowledge
Teamwork

You'll also want to include managerial skills if you’re applying for a higher-level job, such as a food service manager.

Work experience

In your experience section, you’ll want to include any experience you have in the food service industry. List up to 10 years of experience here. A hiring manager will expect more experience if you’re applying for a higher-level job like a restaurant manager. Remember to list your jobs in reverse-chronological order, with the most recent jobs first.

Education

In the education section, include any education you have, including higher education. You can also include certifications, such as the most common one, which is a food safety certification or a food handler’s license.

Do’s and Don’ts for a Food Service Resume

Here are some additional tips to help you write your food service resume:

Do:

Include any relevant work experience that you have. You can include part-time, full-time and volunteer work experience.
Look at the job description carefully before you start writing your resume. Although most food service workers have the same skill set, you’ll want to highlight skills from the job listing.
Check out food service resume examples before you write yours. ResumeNerd resume examples can help you target your resume more effectively.

Don’t:

Submit your resume without proofreading it. One important part of writing a professional resume is ensuring there are no typos in the resume itself.
Include your high school diploma if you have any higher education. If you have a college degree, a recruiter will assume you have a high school diploma or equivalent.
Add experience that’s not relevant. This may include work experience older than 10 years or experience in a completely unrelated field.

FAQ: Food Service Resumes

Do I need to include a cover letter for a food service application?

It’s always a good idea to include a cover letter on your job application, regardless of whether or not the application itself states that you need one. Adding a cover letter allows you to go over your personal information, which can be a helpful way to outline all the reasons you’re perfect for this job. Plus, the ResumeNerd cover letter builder makes it easy to write yours without much experience.

How can I write a food service resume without a lot of experience?

If you’re looking for an entry-level food service worker job, you almost certainly don’t need much experience. Food service jobs are often one of the first jobs that individuals apply to and the food service industry is a great starting point for your resume. In these situations, just highlight your skills, any experience and general knowledge of the food service industry.

How do I change my food service resume to apply to different jobs?

Before you apply for a new job with your food service resume, it’s important to tailor it to that specific job. Although the requirements for most food service jobs are very similar, you’ll want to look through the job description to ensure you’re writing the perfect resume for that specific job. This way, you’re speaking directly as the type of worker the recruiter is looking for.

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About The Author

Cindi Cervone Carlson

Cindi Cervone Carlson is a Senior Vice President for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. Cindi is responsible for developing, delivering, and implementing a dynamic, world-class organization dedicated to delivering outplacement consulting, training, support, and executive coaching. Cindi started her career at Challenger as a client who had lost her job. Over the past nine years, she has risen from an entry-level, part-time professional to Senior Vice President.