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What To Highlight In A Restaurant Manager Resume

Restaurant managers work for restaurants and other food establishments to ensure their customers have a great dining experience. That means they’re responsible for the smooth day-to-day running of restaurant operations, from food service management to safety standards and staff training. Restaurant managers need to be across everything that goes on in the restaurant. As a restaurant manager, your professional resume should reflect the broad nature of the role’s duties and showcase your skills and experience to show you’re the right fit. To ensure this is laid out clearly for the hiring manager, it’s good to use a resume template. Let’s take your resume section by section and explain what a fantastic restaurant general manager resume should look like to help you land your dream job.

Restaurant Manager Resume Example

Restaurant Manager Resume Example
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Structure Of A Restaurant Manager Resume

Your resume should include the following sections:

  • Contact information
  • Resume summary/resume objective
  • Skills section
  • Work experience section
  • Education section

The order of these sections may change depending on the resume format you choose: chronological, functional or combined resume.

The chronological resume prioritizes your employment history. Instead, the functional resume focuses on your abilities. The combined resume contains elements of both. Choose whichever best reflects your strengths as a restaurant manager.

Header

Include your contact information in the header, which will be prominently visible to the recruiter. You should include your full name, address, email, phone number and professional social media, like a LinkedIn profile if you have one. This gives the recruiter clear options to contact you about your job application.

Resume summary/objective

A restaurant manager’s resume should include a resume summary or resume objective; there is a slight difference between the two.

A resume summary gives hiring managers a concise snapshot of your experience and credentials thus far managing restaurants. It’s a fantastic choice if you have the experience to draw upon:

Restaurant Manager with 5+ years of experience ensuring high customer satisfaction standards at fine dining restaurants. Proven track record of excellent budget management and high staff retention.

However, not everybody has bags of experience as a restaurant manager. In that case, you may opt for a more aspirational resume objective:

Assistant restaurant manager with 3+ years of back-of-house experience in inventory management seeking an opportunity for career progression.

Work history

You’ll list your work history in this section in reverse chronological order. Make sure that the experience you include is relevant to the position you’re applying for. So, any roles in the restaurant industry will suffice, but try to show roles with job responsibilities that highlight leadership or management skills.

If you don’t have much restaurant experience, then you may still have relevant experience in other customer service or team leader roles elsewhere.

The best resumes demonstrate your suitability for the role, so bear that in mind when writing your work experience section.

Skills

Being an effective restaurant manager requires various soft skills on top of the specific food and beverage-related expertise needed. Here is a list of in-demand skills for restaurant managers to include in your skills section:

  • Knowledge of food safety and food preparation
  • Communication skills
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Management skills
  • Organizational skills
  • Culinary skills
  • Ability to work under pressure
  • Flexibility
  • Knowledge of POS systems

Your skills section needs to show that you can handle the management aspect of dealing with bartenders, kitchen staff and other restaurant staff. It should also reflect you have the specific industry-related knowledge to excel in a restaurant manager job.

Feel free to use bullet points in this section to keep it concise.

Education

List your qualifications and professional certifications in this section. Restaurant managers tend to need at least a high school diploma but don’t need to hold a bachelor’s degree. Usually, previous management and restaurant experience are more important.

However, any professional certifications for management skills would be great to add to establish your credibility.

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Do's and Don'ts

  • Emphasize any experience with cost-saving initiatives in the past as profit margins are slim in the restaurant industry. So, mentioning experience saving on labor costs, for example, may be valuable.
  • Use the job description for clues about what the recruiter is looking for. Use these to tailor your resume.
  • Emphasize if you have experience nurturing staff members with training programs. Promotion from within is a big part of the restaurant industry.
  • Lie about any previous experience or skills. This move will only get found out later at a job interview and will harm your chances.
  • Include too much experience that isn’t relevant to the role. Your experience section should help the recruiter draw the line between your work history and the advertised position.
  • Try to write your resume without help with our resume builder and our restaurant manager resume samples.

FAQ: Restaurant Manager Resumes

Whenever you apply for a new job, you should always add a customized cover letter to your job application. The cover letter allows you to build on your resume details. It also helps explain your previous experience and skill set. Importantly, it lets you explain why you are applying for the role with this restaurant.

You should always customize your resume for each job application. To do this, look at the job description and job advert. You’ll often find clues about what the hiring manager is looking for.

Without lying about anything, you can then ensure your resume ticks these boxes for the hiring manager to give you the best chance of an interview.

It’s always a challenge to land management roles without previous management experience. However, it’s not impossible; you’ll have to establish your potential through your skills and previous experience and then back this up with a professional cover letter outlining why you’ll be great for the role.

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