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Resume Examples Server Resume Food Service Resume

Food Service Resume Example

Written By Nathan Soto
Headshot of Conrad BenzReviewed By Conrad Benz

Our food service resume example and writing tips will help you learn how to highlight your food service skills and qualifications.

June 9, 2025
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Example of a food service resume. Download
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Table of Contents

Food Service Resume Template

3 Steps for Writing a Strong Food Service Resume

Average food service salaries in the US

Food Service Resume Template

[Your Name]
[Your Address], [City, State]
[Your Email Address] | [Your Phone Number]
[LinkedIn Profile] (optional)
Professional Summary
Food Service Worker with 6+ years of professional experience in both front and back of house, hostessing as well as preparing and serving food. Consistently provide excellent customer service, and possess encyclopedic knowledge of wines, entrees, restaurant equipment, and POS systems. Looking to leverage my knowledge of the industry for a server role at your restaurant.
Skills
  • Sales
  • POS systems
  • Restaurant equipment maintenance
  • Spanish
  • Problem solving
  • Team leadership
Professional Experience
The Big Lobster
Server | Greenville, SC | May 20XX – Present
  • Take customer orders with a friendly demeanor, consistently scoring over 90% satisfaction rating on customer feedback surveys
  • Memorized 200+ cocktails and dishes to answer customer questions and increase sales by providing tailored pairing suggestions
  • Prepare appetizers, entrees, salads, and alcoholic beverages when the kitchen staff is busy, ensuring that all guests received their orders within 20 minutes
  • Trained 4 underperforming servers in upselling techniques, increasing their sales by 10% on average
  • Learned how to manually calculate and split bills, completing 53 orders during an instance when the POS terminal was down
Olive Garden
Hostess | Greenville, SC | August 20XX – April 20XX
  • Scheduled all reservations over the phone and tracked all table availability in a restaurant with 60 tables
  • Welcomed customers and made them feel comfortable while taking care of their dining needs and requests
  • Managed phone orders, relaying them to the kitchen staff, and ensured they were ready for pick up
  • Mastered 3 types of POS Terminals
Education
Resume Genius University | Bachelor of Science in Marketing
Anticipated Graduation Date: May 20XX

3 Steps for Writing a Strong Food Service Resume

“Food service” is an umbrella term that encompasses everything from server and waiter/waitress jobs to line or prep cook positions. With such a vast field to gain experience in and a low barrier to entry, it’s a great place to start picking up skills that you’ll use for the rest of your career.

But if you want to successfully land a job in the food service industry, you’ll need to know how to tailor your resume to match the role you’re looking for. Thankfully, our expert tips will help you write a convincing food service resume for any role you want.

Here are some tips you should keep in mind when writing a stand-out food service resume:

1. Introduce yourself with a career objective

Anyone who’s worked in food service knows that the managers at top restaurants or bars are very busy. If you want to land a job, it’s important that your resume catches their attention quickly.

The best way to do this is through your resume format.

Open with a career objective (or resume objective) — a quick summary of your skills and career goals in the food service industry.

While a career objective is only 3-4 sentences, it should be full of valuable information that grabs an employer’s attention, such as:

  • An overview of your experience
  • Your relevant skills and qualifications
  • What role you hope to fill

After reading your career objective, employers should have a good idea of your experience, skills and whether or not you’d be a good fit for the position.

Here’s an example of a food service career objective:

Food Service Worker with 6+ years of professional experience in both front and back of house, hostessing as well as preparing and serving food. Consistently provide excellent customer service, and possess encyclopedic knowledge of wines, entrees, restaurant equipment, and POS systems. Looking to leverage my knowledge of the industry for a server role at your restaurant.

This objective works because the candidate highlights their years of varied experience, indicating that they are knowledgeable about the smooth operation of a restaurant. They go on to list several key skills that set them apart, and close by stating their career goals.

Writing a strong resume objective like this will get you noticed by employers, who will be drawn in to spend more time looking at your resume.

5 additional food service resume objective examples

Here are some more resume objective examples to help get you started:

Enthusiastic food service professional with 3 years of experience as a server adept at providing excellent customer service in busy restaurants. Works quickly with attention to detail. Seeking a new opportunity to join a high-volume, fast-paced restaurant team.

Culinary school graduate with food preparation and cooking experience looking for an entry-level cook or line prep role in a commercial kitchen. Passionate about crafting quality food and learning new techniques. Available to work flexible shifts including weekends and nights.

Experienced restaurant cook with expertise preparing high-volume meals, managing multiple stations and following proper safety/sanitation protocols. Works well under pressure to meet tight deadlines. Seeking a cook or sous chef position at a thriving restaurant.

Bilingual food service professional seeking front-of-house host or server role. Warm and welcoming with 3+ years experience providing excellent customer service in family restaurants. Talent for generating loyal regular customers and positive reviews.

2. Write a solid professional experience section

Your resume experience section is the core of any good food service job application. This is where employers will look to see whether or not you have the skills and qualifications needed to do the job well.

That’s why it’s important that you make your experience section as compelling as possible. One way to do that is by adding strong action verbs:

Use action verbs

An easy way to strengthen your food service resume is to make your professional experience pop with action verbs. Not only does it keep your resume from being a dull read, it also helps you come off as more proactive.

Instead of starting each bullet point off with passive language like “tasked with” or “responsible for”, start the sentence off with a verb that highlights the actions you took at work.

Here are 30 action verbs to use in your food service resume:

PrepareServeWelcome
OfferSuggestProvide
AnticipateEnsureHandle
DeliverCreateUpsell
CleanMaintainCommunicate
AssistSupportMeet
ContributeCooperateCollaborate
CultivateOrganizeMemorize
TrainGuideIncrease
MaximizeRunOversee

In addition to using action verbs, you should also include hard numbers in your experience section:

Quantify your achievements with hard numbers

While writing your work experience section, use numbers whenever possible so that employers can see what results you achieved at your previous positions.

Here’s an example of how to quantify food service experience on your resume:

Trained 4 underperforming servers in upselling techniques, increasing their sales by 10% on average

Using numbers helps the employer judge your ability to perform. Even if you don’t think your professional achievements are particularly impressive, an employer will be more willing to hire you over someone whose resume is so vague that the employer can’t determine what kind of employee the applicant will be.

3. Prioritize your food service skills

If employers can see that you already possess many or all of the skills needed to fill a role, they’ll be much more likely to hire you. That’s why it’s so important to make sure your food service skills are listed clearly under your skills section or included in your work experience section.

Food service is a customer-oriented industry, so you should include a balanced mix of both hard and soft skills.

Soft skills affect the way you relate to customers and other staff members, while hard skills make up the industry-specific knowledge you’ve picked up with experience and training.

If you’re writing a server resume, be sure to include all of your server skills.

If you’re not sure what skills to include on your resume, here’s a food service skills list:

Food Service Hard Skills
  • Food Handler’s Permit
  • TIPS certification
  • Food safety/hygiene knowledge
  • Product knowledge
  • POS systems
  • Basic math skills
  • Computer skills
  • Language skills
  • Restaurant equipment maintenance (e.g. ice machines, espresso machines, refrigerators, etc.)
Food Service Soft Skills
  • Verbal communication skills
  • Active listening
  • Teamwork
  • Collaboration
  • Patience
  • Stamina
  • Sales skills
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Strong memory
  • Stress management
  • Work well under pressure
  • Time management skills
  • People skills
  • Problem-solving skills
  • Tactfulness
  • Multitasking
  • Organizational skills
  • Adaptability

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Average food service salaries in the US

After you’ve written your resume, make sure you use it to apply for jobs within a fair salary range.

The following table includes information from the most recent US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics report (May 2024). Here are the ten states with the highest salaries for food service workers, as well as the national average for your reference when applying for work.

Top 10 states by average food service worker salary

StateSalary / Year
District of Columbia$40,870
California$39,450
Washington$39,150
Vermont$37,640
New York$36,300
Massachusetts$35,970
Maine$35,360
Oregon$35,090
Connecticut$34,960
New Jersey$34,160
National Average$31,350
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Food Service Resume Example

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Written by

Nathan Soto

Nathan Soto is dedicated to providing practical guidance to job seekers, especially people with nonlinear career paths. Nathan’s articles and career advice have been featured on multiple platforms, including Forbes, MSN, NBC New York, Memphis Business Journal, Newsweek, and Fast Company, offering insights into resume writing, interview preparation, and personal branding. Nathan graduated from the University of Nevada with a double B.A. in French and Music. In addition to writing, he also excels as a Mandarin–English translator.

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