Restaurant Manager Resume

You can uphold customer service standards, manage administrative responsibilities, and provide effective leadership to your staff. But can you write a job-winning resume? If you’re a restaurant manager looking for a new job, use these four tips to convince employers you’re the ideal applicant to manage their restaurants.

1. Include a mix of hard and soft skills

Working as a restaurant manager requires you to use hard and soft skills on a daily basis.

You need many hard skills to operate a restaurant and keep it running smoothly. Hard skills (also known as technical skills) are skills you learn from schooling or practical experience.

For instance, listing your cashier skills and server skills assures employers that you know how to use point-of-sale (POS) systems and have the basic qualifications to work in a restaurant.

However, managing a restaurant requires handling more responsibilities such as managing staff schedules and keeping financial records, so mention your knowledge of scheduling software, inventory management systems, and bookkeeping software. List the specific names of the software you’re familiar with so employers know they won’t have to spend time training you to use them.

These are other hard skills for your resume:

• Administrative skills
• Computer skills
• Language skills
• Maintaining hygiene, licensing, safety, and COVID-19 health standards
• Managing staff and restaurant budgets
• Menu planning
• Ordering supplies
• Physical stamina
• Social media knowledge (For example, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram)
• Training and supervising staff
• Using restaurant machinery

Besides adding your hard skills to your resume skills section, include them in your work experience section to further highlight your talents as a restaurant manager.

Here’s how this resume effectively lists programs and quantifies our applicant’s hard skills:

Increased customer engagement on company’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts by 20% through interactive promotions and contests

Gain more hard skills ideas from high-quality resumes in similar fields, such as an operations manager resume.

By contrast, soft skills relate to your personality, work ethic, and emotional intelligence.

Soft skills tell employers you understand how to manage people effectively and provide excellent customer service to patrons. As a restaurant manager, you’ll be interacting with people on a daily basis, so having excellent people skills and customer service skills is crucial.

Employers also look for restaurant managers who have strong management skills and can successfully lead a team of restaurant staff to create a pleasant dining experience for customers.

Here are other essential soft skills for your restaurant manager resume:

• Communication skills
• Efficiency
• Flexibility
• Interpersonal skills
• Leadership skills
• Multitasking skills
• Organizational skills
• Positive attitude
• Presentation skills
• Sales skills
• Teamwork skills
• Time management skills

2. Quantify your accomplishments by using hard numbers

Running a successful restaurant involves more than churning out happy customers after they’ve had a delicious meal at your establishment. Employers want to know that you understand the profits and losses involved in operating a restaurant.

Although the profit margins of individual establishments vary, many restaurants operate at a low-profit margin and employers want to hear that you keep inventory, food waste, and labor costs in mind while managing a restaurant.

Quantifying your accomplishments demonstrates that you’re a results-oriented manager. So, include hard numbers in your resume accomplishments to convey that not only do you consider the bottom line, but you also have experience in managing profits and losses.

Make sure to quantify your accomplishments by including dollar values, percentages, time, and other relevant data.

We’ve bolded parts of this bullet point from our restaurant manager resume sample to show how our applicant uses percentages and the restaurant’s profit margin to describe their achievements:

Increased the profit margin of select menu items by 15% by switching to a local supplier with lower ingredient costs

By using hard numbers, the candidate successfully communicates the direct and measurable impact their management had on the restaurant’s profit margin.

3. Highlight your leadership abilities on your restaurant manager resume

As a restaurant manager, you’re responsible for the general management and operation of the establishment. You’ll have a long list of people to manage — such as kitchen staff, chefs, servers, bartenders, and hosts or hostesses. The success of the restaurant depends on your ability to manage a diverse group of individuals in different roles.

So take this opportunity to state impressive employee retention rates, training programs you’ve implemented, successful recruitment initiatives, and other relevant accomplishments.

Here’s an example from our restaurant manager resume that shows strong leadership abilities:

Hired, trained, and coached 50+ staff members on customer service skills, food and beverage knowledge, and COVID-19 safety standards in preparation for the July 2021 restaurant grand opening

4. Mention your knowledge of restaurant laws and regulations

Restaurants in the US are governed by many rules and regulations. As a restaurant manager, it’s your responsibility to have extensive knowledge of how to enforce these regulations.

For example, your state may require that all staff be certified with TIPS Alcohol Training to serve alcohol. Because a restaurant can lose its ability to operate or incur heavy fines if regulations are not properly followed, employers want to know that you’ll follow their exact policies.

So if you’re familiar with regulations regarding labor, food safety, and serving alcohol, state this knowledge on your resume. And if this is new information to you, don’t worry — it’s not too late to spend some time studying before your interview.

Try listing your knowledge of rules and regulations in the additional skills section of your restaurant manager resume, like in this example:

Extensive knowledge of the rules and regulations set forth by the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association, the American Food Safety Institute, and United States Labor Law

By highlighting specific institutions with rules and regulations that affect the restaurant industry, you’ll strengthen your position as a highly knowledgeable and responsible restaurant manager.