How to get hired as a restaurant manager in 2026-27

Restaurant manager is six different jobs, and they hire differently

One title covers a drive-thru turning a car every three minutes and a 60-seat chef-owned dining room that serves a tenth of the transactions at four times the check. The skills overlap. The hiring process, the numbers you are judged on and the person who decides barely do. Work out which version you are applying to before you write a word, because the resume that wins one is noise to another.

There is also a vertical split inside most buildings. A general manager owns the whole profit and loss statement. A kitchen manager or chef owns food cost, prep, ordering and the back-of-house schedule. A front-of-house, service or bar manager owns the floor, service standards, reservations and often beverage cost. An assistant manager usually owns a daypart. Shift lead or key holder is the first rung with keys, a safe code and the authority to send someone home. Read the posting for which of these it actually is, because plenty are advertised as general manager and are not, and plenty of assistant manager jobs are a general manager's workload at an assistant's pay.

Segment also sets the pace of the job. Quick service lives on speed of service, order accuracy and labor deployment by half hour. Full service lives on table turns, server sections, check average and the bar. Hotel and contract dining add a client, a budget approved months in advance, and far more paperwork.

• Franchise quick service (burgers, chicken, pizza, coffee, tacos): hired by a franchisee or their director of operations, often fast. Judged on speed-of-service timers, order accuracy, car counts, food and paper cost, labor by half hour, and crew turnover. Expect weekends, and expect to own either a late close or an early open.
• Fast casual (bowls, salads, pizza, sandwiches): company-owned more often than franchised, so expect a corporate process with an assessment. Heavy digital order mix, so throughput, order accuracy and the pickup shelf matter as much as the line.
• Casual dining chain (the large table-service brands): the most structured hiring in the industry. Recruiter, district manager, market director, assessment, background check. Judged on comparable sales, guest satisfaction scores, hourly turnover, and prime cost against a budget you did not set.
• Independent and chef-driven: the owner decides, usually after a trail shift. Judged on whether the room runs, the staff stay, the reviews hold and the cash reconciles. Far more autonomy over menu, price and vendors, far less back-office support, and the P&L may be a spreadsheet the owner keeps in their own handwriting.
• Hotel and resort food and beverage: multiple outlets plus banquets, room service and sometimes a pool bar. Budget driven, forecast heavy, unionized in some cities, and the banquet side runs on a different financial model with contribution per cover and labor booked against events.
• Contract and campus dining (hospital, university, corporate cafeteria, senior living, stadium): the operator is a company such as Compass, Aramark or Sodexo, and the account belongs to a client. More predictable hours than restaurants, real benefits, budget and client satisfaction as the scoreboard, and a long interview chain because the client interviews you too.
• Ghost kitchen, catering and delivery-only: no dining room, so the job becomes throughput, packaging accuracy, aggregator channel management and courier handoff. The operating numbers sit closer to quick service than to full service, and commission on the delivery channels is a cost line you will be asked about.

The numbers owners expect to hear, and how to say them

This is the part most candidates get wrong, and it is the part that decides the interview. An owner or district manager is not testing whether you memorized a textbook benchmark. They are testing whether you have looked at your own restaurant's numbers often enough to know them without notes, whether you understand what moves them, and whether you can tell the difference between a number that improved because you managed it and a number that improved because the menu price went up.

Quote your own figure first and the benchmark second. "We ran 31.2 food and 29.8 labor, so prime cost 61 on an average week of 78,000 dollars" is an answer. "Industry standard is around 30 percent" is not, and it tells the person opposite you that you have never counted a walk-in on a Sunday night.

Benchmarks vary enormously by segment, and quoting the wrong one marks you as an outsider. The ranges below are what operators commonly target. Treat them as orientation, not as facts about any particular restaurant, because the only number that matters in your interview is the one on that restaurant's statement.

Prime cost is the figure most owners lead with, because it is the part of the business a manager actually controls. It is food and beverage cost plus total labor cost including payroll taxes and benefits, as a percentage of sales. Full service operators commonly aim at or below 65 percent and treat the low 60s as healthy. Quick service often targets 60 to 65. Above the mid 60s there is usually nothing left after rent.

Know the formulas, because you will be asked to compute something out loud or on paper. Cost of goods sold equals beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory. Food cost percentage equals cost of goods sold divided by food sales. Labor cost percentage equals total labor cost divided by sales. Turnover equals separations in the period divided by the average number of employees in the period, times 100, and you should say whether that figure is voluntary, involuntary or both, and whether it includes seasonal staff.

On turnover specifically: do not quote a national statistic. Accommodation and food services has for years been among the highest separation-rate sectors in the Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS series, and that is all an interviewer needs to hear about the industry. What they want is your number, your method and your intervention. An answer with the shape of "hourly turnover was 94 percent annualized when I arrived and 61 percent a year later, counting voluntary and involuntary separations against average headcount, and the two things that moved it were a written three-shift onboarding instead of shadowing and posting the schedule fourteen days out instead of four" is complete, and almost nobody gives one.

• Food cost percentage: full service commonly targets roughly 28 to 35 percent. Steakhouses and seafood sit higher, often 35 to 40, because the protein is the product. Pizza sits notably lower, often in the low to mid 20s. Quick service commonly runs 25 to 33 including paper and packaging, which many operators track as one combined food and paper line.
• Beverage cost: targets run by category, not as one number. Spirits pour cost commonly 18 to 24 percent, draft beer in the high teens to low 20s, bottled beer a little higher, and wine the highest at roughly 30 to 40 percent because wine is marked up on dollars rather than multiples. Quote one blended bar number and you will be asked to break it out.
• Labor cost percentage: full service commonly 30 to 35 percent of sales including management and payroll taxes, quick service often 25 to 32. Say explicitly whether your figure is hourly only, hourly plus management, or fully loaded with taxes and benefits, because people quote all three and call them the same thing.
• Occupancy: rent plus the costs that travel with it, commonly 6 to 10 percent of sales, and a fixed cost you cannot schedule your way out of. Worth naming, because it shows you understand why prime cost has to land where it does.
• Net profit: thin. Full service restaurants commonly land in low single-digit percentages of sales, quick service somewhat higher. Any candidate who talks about restaurants as a high-margin business loses the room.
• Theoretical versus actual food cost: theoretical is what the recipes and the sales mix say you should have spent. The gap is waste, over-portioning, theft, comps and mis-receiving. Most operators want the variance inside a point or two. Being able to say "we ran 1.4 points over theoretical and two thirds of it was the fry station" is a very strong signal.
• Sales per labor hour: total sales divided by hours worked. It is the number that lets you compare a Tuesday lunch with a Saturday dinner honestly, and it is how a good manager defends a schedule instead of just cutting hours.
• Third-party delivery: know your channel mix as a percentage of sales, the commission rate on each aggregator, what a delivery order actually contributes after commission and packaging, and your accuracy and refund rate on that channel. It is now a standard interview question in every segment that runs it.
• Inventory discipline: count weekly, same day, same order, same people. Fresh product should turn roughly weekly in a full service kitchen, and a walk-in holding three weeks of stock is cash sitting in the cold and a spoilage number waiting to happen.
• Comps, voids and discounts as a percentage of sales: operators watch this closely, want it low, commonly under one to two percent, and want it attributable by manager and by reason code.
• Guest side: average check or per person average, cover counts by daypart, table turns, year-on-year comparable sales split into transactions versus check (growth from price alone is not growth), speed of service or ticket times, Google rating and review volume, and whatever survey score the brand uses.
• Health and safety: your last inspection result, every violation on it, whether each was corrected on site, and your line temperature and cooling log routine. Jurisdictions differ, so know the form yours uses, whether that is a numeric score, a letter grade posted in the window, or a pass with violations listed. "I think we did fine" is a failed answer in all of them.

What actually gates the job, and what does not

Very little formally gates restaurant management, which is why it remains one of the few well-paid operational careers genuinely open to someone who started on a dish machine. The real gate is a food safety certification, and it is cheap and fast. Almost everything else that reads like a barrier is a preference.

The certification you need is an accredited food protection manager certificate for the person in charge. ServSafe Manager is the common one and the name most postings use, though many jurisdictions accept any ANAB-accredited equivalent. The exam is 90 multiple choice questions, usually proctored, usually passed on the day of an eight-hour course, and typically valid for five years. Requirements are set locally rather than nationally, so the questions to answer are what your county or city health department names, how often it must be renewed there, whether the certificate must be physically posted, and whether a certified person must be on duty at all times rather than merely on the payroll. Get it before you apply if you do not already hold it. A candidate who turns up certified has removed the one objection a hiring manager can make without talking to them at all.

• Food protection manager certification: required for the person in charge in most jurisdictions. One day, same-day result, usually five years, usually under 200 dollars for course plus exam. Put the expiry date on your resume.
• Alcohol certification: required of managers in many states, separately from the staff-level server card. TIPS and ServSafe Alcohol are the usual private programs; Texas, California, Washington, Oregon, Utah and others run or approve their own. Two to four hours online, usually a same-day certificate. Some states require named managers to be registered with the alcohol agency, which is a different thing from holding a card.
• Allergen awareness: a small number of states require specific allergen training for the person in charge. Check yours, and hold it anyway if you run a kitchen, because the question comes up in interviews even where it is not mandated.
• Liquor license: held by the business, not by you. You may still need to be named on it or to hold a personal manager permit in some jurisdictions. Never claim on a resume that you hold a liquor license.
• Background check: standard at chains, hotels and contract caterers, and common in franchise groups. Roles with safe access and deposit duty sometimes add a credit check, and some franchise groups still drug test.
• Food handler cards for staff: not a gate on you, but tracking whose card has expired is a standard manager duty and a standard interview question.
• Optional and genuinely useful: the Foodservice Management Professional (FMP) credential, aimed at people without a degree who want a formal line on the resume. Nobody requires it. It occasionally breaks a tie for corporate roles and does nothing at an independent.
• Does not gate the job: a culinary degree, a hospitality degree, a sommelier qualification, barista competition placings, or a portfolio of cocktail menus. Each can help in a specific room. None is a route past operating history.

How hiring actually works, step by step

The most important fact about this role is that most restaurant managers are promoted rather than recruited. If you already work in a restaurant, the fastest path to management is usually inside the company you are in or one across the street, and the conversation that gets you there is with your general manager and their district manager, not with an application form. Say out loud that you want the next role, ask what specifically you have to demonstrate, and then demonstrate it where the district manager can see it.

From outside, there are three live channels and they are not equally good. The employer's own careers site works for chains and contract caterers, because that is the system their district managers actually read. Walking in with a printed resume between 2pm and 4pm, after the lunch rush and before dinner prep, still works at independents and small franchise groups, and it is a real advantage over an emailed PDF. Being known already is the strongest channel of all: chefs, district managers and multi-unit owners hire people they have watched work, and many good independent management jobs are filled before they are ever posted.

At chains, first contact is now often a text message or a chat thread rather than a call, because the hiring systems the industry uses (Paradox, Workstream, Harri, HigherMe, the hiring module in 7shifts, and the Indeed pipeline) are built around messaging. Reply the same day. Scheduling speed is a real and controllable advantage, and interview slots are handed out in reply order.

The screening call is short and almost always covers four things: what volume you have run, what your prime cost was, your availability and willingness to travel or relocate, and your pay expectation. Have a number ready and anchor it to volume. "At a 4 million dollar unit I would be looking at X" is a better answer than a bare figure.

The real interview is usually with a district manager, area coach, chef owner or director of operations, and it very often happens in a restaurant rather than an office. Expect 60 to 90 minutes. Expect it to move from your P&L to scenarios to a walk around the building. The walk around is not a tour. It is the test, and you will be asked what you see.

Then there is the working interview, close to universal at independents and common at chains as a final stage. It takes three forms: a trail shift where you shadow, a stage where you work, or a store visit where the district manager walks the restaurant you run now with you. Treat a store visit as the highest-leverage hour of the process, because it is where the gap between what you said and what your building looks like on a Tuesday becomes visible. If you are doing productive work, ask about pay. In the United States an employer that has you working generally owes you at least minimum wage for that time, and a reputable operator offers without being asked.

Large chains and contract caterers add an assessment, usually a behavioral or cognitive instrument, sometimes a recorded one-way video interview. These tend to be pass or park rather than finely ranked. Answer consistently rather than trying to game a profile, and record the video somewhere quiet with the restaurant noise off.

Offer stage brings a background check and references. Expect them to want your current district manager, which is the awkward part of this industry: say early that your search is confidential and offer a former supervisor, a vendor rep and a chef you worked under instead, then release the current reference once you have the offer in writing. Read the written offer for the bonus plan terms, not just the base. Independents sometimes go from interview to start date inside a week. A corporate chain rarely does it in under three.

• Internal promotion sequence that actually happens: strong hourly, then trainer or key holder, then shift lead, then assistant manager owning a daypart, then general manager. Two to five years is normal, faster in quick service and in a group that is opening units.
• What gets you noticed internally: volunteering for inventory, learning the schedule build, being the person who can close the restaurant alone, and asking to be taught the P&L. Managers promote the person already doing part of the job.
• Best external signal: a district manager who has eaten in your restaurant. Second best: a referral from someone already inside. Third: the employer's own careers site. Worst: mass applying through an aggregator with a generic resume.
• Walk-in timing at independents: Tuesday to Thursday, 2pm to 4pm. Never Friday evening, never during a service, and check first whether that kitchen is dark on Mondays.
• Bring a one-page 30/60/90 to the final interview: what you would measure in the first two weeks, what you would not change yet, and the two things you would fix by day 90. Almost no candidate brings one and every operator reads it.
• Ask early who you will report to and how many units they carry. A district manager with eight restaurants runs a very different job for you than one with three.
• Expect the process to be slower in hotels and contract dining and much faster in independents. If an independent takes four weeks to decide, that is information about how the business is run.

The resume: one page of numbers, and what gets skipped

A restaurant resume is read in under a minute, on a phone, by someone who is behind on a schedule. It needs volume, scope and results in the first third of the page, as numbers. The most common reason a qualified manager does not get called is a resume that describes duties everyone in the role has instead of results only that person produced.

Open with two or three lines that state segment, volume and scope, not personality. Something in the shape of: "Restaurant general manager, high-volume casual dining. 4.2 million dollar unit, 62 staff, 2,400 covers a week. Held prime cost at 59 to 61 percent across eight periods and cut hourly turnover by a third." That beats every sentence containing the word passionate ever written.

Every role entry needs four facts before any bullet: concept and segment, annual or weekly sales volume, headcount, and what you personally owned. A hiring manager cannot calibrate "managed a busy restaurant". They can calibrate "68 seats plus a 40-seat patio, 95,000 dollars a week in summer, 34 staff, I owned the floor and the bar program, the chef owned the kitchen".

Write bullets as result, then mechanism. The mechanism is what proves you did it rather than benefited from it. "Reduced food cost from 34.1 to 30.6 percent over two periods by moving to weekly counts, rebuilding six recipe cards against actual yields, and adding a second produce vendor for price pressure; prime cost finished at 59 percent" survives scrutiny. "Responsible for food cost control" does not.

Name your systems by name: point of sale, scheduling and labor, inventory and accounting, reservations, delivery aggregation, payroll, reputation. Operators filter hard on this, because retraining a manager on an unfamiliar back-office stack costs them weeks, and because naming the stack proves you touched the back office rather than only the floor.

Put certifications near the top with expiry dates, and add a one-line availability and mobility statement at the bottom if it helps you: willingness to work weekends and holidays, to relocate, or to open a new unit. Opening experience is scarce and valuable to any group that is growing.

Length: one page up to about ten years of experience, two at the very most. Save it as a PDF with your name in the filename. Keep it plain: no photo, no columns that break a parser, no skills bar charts, no graphics.

• Put on it: unit volume, covers or transactions, headcount, number of units if multi-unit, food cost, labor cost, prime cost, comparable sales change, turnover change, health inspection results, guest satisfaction or review rating change, openings and remodels, and any P&L you owned end to end.
• Systems worth naming if you have actually used them: Toast, Square for Restaurants, Oracle Micros Simphony, NCR Voyix Aloha, SpotOn, TouchBistro, Lightspeed, Revel; 7shifts, Fourth (HotSchedules), Crunchtime, Harri, When I Work; Restaurant365, MarginEdge, MarketMan, xtraCHEF by Toast; OpenTable, Resy, SevenRooms, Tock; Olo, Otter, Deliverect, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub; ADP or Paylocity for payroll.
• Ignored entirely: objective statements, the word passionate, "team player", "fast-paced environment", a list of duties every manager performs, high school detail once you have five years of work, and references available on request.
• Quietly damaging: unexplained gaps, five jobs in three years with no reason given (restaurant people move, but say why), a two-page resume at three years of experience, and claiming systems you cannot operate, because the walk-through will find it.
• Worth a line even though it feels small: Spanish or another second language spoken on the line, because in many kitchens it is the difference between leading and relaying.
• Crossing in from retail or hotel operations: translate rather than hoping. Shrink becomes waste and theft, labor percentage is the same concept, planograms and daypart deployment are schedule building, and inventory is inventory. Say the restaurant word, not the retail one.

What the interview really tests

A restaurant management interview is three tests wearing one coat: can you read a P&L, can you hold a building together on a bad night, and do people want to work for you. The questions are unusually concrete and the follow-ups go one layer deeper than most candidates prepare for, because the interviewer has run the shift you are describing and knows what it takes.

Expect to be asked to compute something. It can be a sales and labor sheet with a question about where you would cut, or a page of the P&L with a line that moved. Practice percentages without a calculator. If the numbers do not add up, say so out loud and show your working, because an interviewer who hands you a deliberately broken sheet is testing exactly that.

Expect the walk-through. Whether you are walking their building or they are walking yours, experienced operators look at the same things in roughly this order: the walk-in (organization, date labels, first in first out, anything on the floor), line temperatures and the cooling log, the reach-in gaskets and the ice machine, the dish pit, the restrooms, the dumpster corral, the back hallway and the office, and the schedule on the wall. Then they watch how the staff react to you. Being greeted by name by three people in ten minutes says more than any answer you will give.

• "What was your food cost last period, and how do you know?" The follow-up is always the method. Say when you count, who counts, how you price inventory, and what your theoretical to actual variance was.
• "Walk me through your P&L." Go line by line from sales down through cost of goods, labor, controllables, occupancy, to the bottom. Naming the controllables (smallwares, linen, cleaning, repairs, credit card fees, delivery commissions) separates managers who have seen the statement from managers who have only been told their food cost.
• "It is Wednesday at noon and you are three points over on labor. What do you do?" The wrong answer is "send someone home". The right one works forward: check the forecast against actual sales, decide whether it is a sales problem or a deployment problem, cut the last hour of the shift that is genuinely not needed, protect the stations that drive ticket times, and fix the schedule build rather than the symptom.
• "A server calls out at 5pm on a Friday." They want your actual sequence: your call list, how you reconfigure sections, whether you take a section yourself, and what you changed the following week so it happened less often.
• "Tell me about the last person you terminated." They are testing documentation, consistency and composure. Name the policy, the prior conversations, who else was in the room, and what the rest of the team saw afterwards.
• "What was your last health inspection result and what was on it?" Know the violations, which were corrected on site, and what changed in your routine afterwards.
• "A guest says they had an allergic reaction to a dish." Immediate care first, then the ticket, the recipe, the prep, the allergen handling and the supplier spec. Say explicitly that you do not argue with the guest in the dining room.
• "How do you handle a one-star review naming a server?" Respond publicly and briefly without disclosing anything about the employee, move the detail offline, and separate the service failure from the personal attack when you talk to the server.
• "What is your turnover and how did you get it?" Formula, scope, trend, and the two specific things you changed.
• "How do you open and close?" Many interviewers want the checklist in order, including cash procedures, safe counts, deposit, alarm, and the handover note to the next shift.
• Wage and hour questions are increasingly common, and one wrong answer is disqualifying. Know that managers and supervisors can never keep or share in employee tips in the United States, including through a tip pool. Know how the tip credit works in your state and which states do not allow one, the difference between a tip and a mandatory service charge, your state's break and overtime rules, the federal restrictions on what workers under 18 can operate, and whether your city has a predictive scheduling ordinance with posting notice and premium pay for late changes.
• Questions you should ask: what the unit is doing in sales and which way it is trending, current prime cost, how many managers are on the team and who closes, hourly turnover, why the last manager left, how bonus is calculated and what it actually paid last year against target, how many restaurants your direct manager carries, and what they would want fixed in your first ninety days.
• Dress for the segment, not for an office. Clean and pressed, closed-toe shoes you could walk a kitchen in. A suit in a fast casual reads as badly as a polo shirt in a hotel food and beverage interview.

Pay, bonus and the parts of the offer that decide whether you stay

Pay for this role spreads further than almost any other management job, because it tracks volume and segment far more than title. The general manager of a 1.2 million dollar quick service unit and the general manager of a 6 million dollar steakhouse have the same words on their business cards. Do not negotiate from a title. Negotiate from volume, headcount, number of dayparts and whether you carry the whole P&L.

For a defensible range, start with the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics series, code 11-9051 Food Service Managers, which gives national, state and metropolitan medians and percentiles, and code 35-1012 for supervisor-level roles. Then read twenty live postings in your own metro and segment. Pay transparency laws in a growing number of states and cities mean many now carry a real range, which is better evidence about your market than any national median.

The bonus is where restaurant offers hide. Most salaried management offers carry one, and the terms vary enormously: a percentage of unit profit, a formula on controllable profit, a flat amount gated on hitting several targets at once, or a discretionary payment. Ask three questions before you accept. What is the formula. What did this position actually pay out last year against target. Does the plan have a gate, meaning a threshold on guest scores, inspection or turnover that must clear before any financial component pays at all. A plan with a 20 percent target that paid 4 percent two years running is a 4 percent plan.

Then ask about the parts that are not money, because they decide whether you stay: how many hours the schedule really is, how many consecutive days you will work, whether there is a guaranteed day off, whether salaried managers get extra pay for covering a hole (some groups do), health insurance and when it starts, paid time off and whether it is realistically takeable given your management cover, and the meal policy. Burnout and clopening are the normal reasons restaurant managers leave, not pay.

• Anchor your number to volume: "at a 4 million dollar unit with 60 staff I am looking for X" invites a real conversation. A bare figure invites a flat no.
• Ask what the salary assumes in hours. A salary that looks strong at 45 hours is a pay cut at 60, and the second number is the one you will live.
• Check exempt classification honestly. The executive exemption requires a duties test as well as a salary threshold, that threshold has moved and been challenged in court, and several states set a higher one. A manager who spends the week working a station may be misclassified.
• Multi-unit and relocation money is real in growing groups. If you are willing to open new units or to move, say so, because it is scarce and it prices.
• Get the bonus plan in writing before you start, not in the first week after.
• Watch the handover. If the restaurant is between managers and running on an assistant and a district manager, your first ninety days are repair work, and that is worth either more money or a very explicit conversation about what support exists.

From the line to general manager, and keeping the receipts

If you are not a manager yet, the sequence that works is unglamorous. Become the person who can be left alone with the building. Learn to count inventory properly and volunteer to do it. Learn the schedule build, including how the forecast is made and why Tuesday gets fewer hours. Ask your general manager to teach you the P&L, and ask again when they are not busy. Train new staff and keep a note of who you trained. Then tell your general manager and their district manager, explicitly and more than once, that you want the next shift lead role, and ask what you need to show.

If you are already a shift lead or assistant manager, the gap to general manager is almost always financial ownership and people decisions. Ask to own a cost line, any cost line, end to end for a quarter. Ask to run the hiring for one position from posting to first shift. Ask to sit in on a termination. Those three experiences are what a district manager is looking for, and none of them requires the title first.

Crossover paths that work: kitchen manager to general manager is common and usually needs you to prove you can run a dining room and a bar. Bar manager to general manager needs you to prove food cost. Hotel food and beverage into restaurants works well. Retail store management into restaurants works if you can show you understand food safety and the back of house, which is where retail managers get caught. Contract dining is often the easiest entry for someone switching in, because the operators hire at volume and train their own systems.

The highest-return habit in this job, for the job itself and for every future interview, is keeping your own numbers. Nobody hands you a leaver's file with your food cost history in it, and the day you walk out of a building you lose access to the system that held it.

Once a period, write five things in a document you own: sales and the year-on-year comparison, food cost and labor cost and prime cost, headcount and separations, your inspection result and review rating, and one sentence on anything you changed and what it did. It takes ten minutes. Two years later it is the difference between an interview where you quote six numbers from memory and one where you say you think food cost was around thirty.

Do not take anything confidential with you. You do not need the employer's reports. You need your own figures, written down at the time, in a file that is yours.

• Build the habit before you need it: a one-page period log of sales, prime cost, headcount, separations, inspection result and one change you made.
• Keep a running list of people you hired, trained and promoted. "Three of my servers are now shift leads and one runs her own store" is the most persuasive single sentence available to a restaurant manager in an interview.
• Keep certifications current and diaried. An expired food protection manager certificate at the moment an opportunity appears costs you a week you may not have.
• Build the relationship with your district manager before you want something from them. They hire across their whole patch, and they hear about openings at other groups first.
• If you leave, leave properly. The restaurant industry is small in every city, and the reference call that decides your next job will be made to someone who already knows how your last shift went.

What a screen is looking for

These are the terms that a resume screen, human or automated, is matching against for this role. Use the ones that are true of you, in the words the posting uses.

• Restaurant manager
• Restaurant general manager
• Assistant general manager
• Kitchen manager
• Front of house manager
• Shift leader
• Multi-unit management
• P&L management
• Prime cost
• Food cost percentage
• Cost of goods sold (COGS)
• Labor cost percentage
• Labor cost control
• Sales per labor hour
• Theoretical food cost
• Inventory management
• Weekly inventory counts
• Waste tracking
• Vendor negotiation
• Purchasing and receiving
• Menu engineering
• Recipe costing
• Portion control
• Scheduling and forecasting
• Staff scheduling
• Hiring and onboarding
• Staff training and development
• Employee retention
• Turnover reduction
• Performance management
• Progressive discipline
• ServSafe Manager certification
• Food protection manager certification
• Food safety and HACCP
• Health inspection
• Allergen management
• Alcohol service certification
• TIPS certified
• Guest satisfaction
• Service recovery
• Online reviews and reputation
• Speed of service
• Ticket times
• Table turns
• Average check
• Covers per shift
• Comparable sales
• Cash handling and reconciliation
• Comps and voids
• Opening and closing procedures
• New restaurant opening
• Toast POS
• Aloha POS
• Oracle Micros Simphony
• Square for Restaurants
• 7shifts
• HotSchedules
• Crunchtime
• Restaurant365
• MarginEdge
• OpenTable
• SevenRooms
• Third-party delivery management
• Catering and banquets
• Bilingual Spanish

Mistakes that cost people this job

Questions people ask