Food Service Cover Letter Sample

Text Format

[Today’s Date]

[Hiring Manager’s Name]
[341 Company Address]
[Company City, State XXXXX]
[(XXX) XXX-XXXX]
[hiring.manager@gmail.com]

Dear [Mr./Mx./Ms.] [Manager’s Name],

I’m writing to you regarding the food service position at [Company Name] that I saw on [Website Name]. With over six years of experience in the industry, my skills prove that I am a strong candidate for the role, and I am confident that I will make a valuable addition to your establishment.

While working at The Big Lobster for the past two years, I honed my customer service skills, as well as mastered keeping track of inventory and training underperforming staff, becoming a well-rounded food service worker in the process. I also served as an assistant food service worker, where I perfected menu presentation, mastered 3 types of POS Terminals, and helped maintained a hygienic kitchen. My contributions made both establishments higher performing, and helped give many customers a pleasant dining experience.

My accomplishments include:

Manually calculating and splitting bills, completing 53 orders when the POS terminal was down
Learning a special shorthand for taking down phone orders quickly and efficiently
Compiling an encyclopedic knowledge of wines, entrees, restaurant equipment, and POS terminals

With my wealth of experience, I am the perfect fit for your restaurant. I have attached my resume to further demonstrate my previous experiences and valuable skills. I look forward to hearing from you, and would be happy to come in for an interview. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

How to Write a Food Service Cover Letter

Learning how to put together a cover letter for the specific job(s) you want will help you land more interviews.

Many people think that you can just walk into a restaurant and get a job. But as anyone who has actually worked in food service knows, that’s incorrect.

Restaurants, bars, and dining establishments expect their applicants to have outstanding resumes and cover letters that highlight their achievements.

If you’re looking to advance in food service, you need to have a competitive cover letter. So here are three tips to make sure that your food service cover letter is as strong as possible.

1. Highlight your food service skills

Especially in stressful and fast-paced jobs like food service, hiring managers need to know you have a solid set of skills to fall back on in any situation. You shouldn’t copy over the skills section of your resume, but pointing out a few of your best or most impressive abilities lets them know which of your skills are your strongest.

Here are some of the top food service skills hiring managers look for that you can work into your cover letter:

Communication skills
Active listening
Point of sale (POS) terminals
Customer service skills
Teamwork
Problem solving
Time management skills
Sales skills
Memorization
Management skills
Training staff
Menu presentation

Food service primarily relies on soft skills, but the more relevant hard skills you already have, the less your new employer will need to train you, so add relevant hard skills too.

2. Add hard numbers to your achievements

Ultimately, food establishments are businesses, and servers are the sales staff. If you can add hard numbers to your achievements, you provide some context to your accomplishments on the job.

Use your cover letter to describe your achievements, including the positive contributions you brought to your workplace. There are many ways to find numbers in your work. For example, a:

percent increase in sales
decrease in time wasted
dollar amount of money raised through a specific initiative

This food service cover letter has an example of hard numbers being used to underline accomplishments:

Manually calculating and splitting bills, completing 53 orders when the POS terminal was down.

By adding numbers, your cover letter proves you’re someone who can be relied upon to think analytically when it comes to sales.

3. Tailor your food service cover letter to the job post

The quickest way to win hiring managers’ attention is to be the perfect response to their job listing. Include any information you can that directly addresses what the job ad is looking for. Additionally, don’t waste space listing previous jobs that aren’t relevant to the job you’re applying to unless a specific experience or achievement from one of them translates well.

Using keywords on your resume and cover letter directly from the job posting and connecting them to previous achievements is an effective way to prove that you can do the core tasks required for the job.

By contrast, talking about a graphic design internship wouldn’t be as helpful because the skills generally aren’t transferable.