Being a restaurant manager is a difficult job. It's fast and stressful, and requires a special combination of skills and personality traits (most importantly, staying calm under pressure). Restaurant managers are responsible for overseeing both food quality and staff operations. The most challenging aspects of being a restaurant manager involve training and motivating staff to constantly meet customer demand.
This involves providing adequate oversight of food preparation protocols, including culinary and food safety training. It also involves taking a practical role in creating a culture that values and offers a level of customer service appropriate to the type of food you are providing. You should also know that it is quite difficult to successfully manage employees and that it also takes a lot of time and nerves. You should also know that you'll often have to work in the afternoon or even during the night as a restaurant manager, while secretaries and most people can simply relax or sleep during those unpleasant hours.
In fact, if you run a restaurant that generates significant turnover, you'll often also get a fraction of the profits as a bonus, which can amount to significant amounts of money. One of the perks of being a restaurant manager is that you can make a lot of guests happy and make sure they have fun. As a restaurant manager, it's also up to you to manage your employees and this gives you the opportunity to do things the way you want them to be, since not only will you be a normal employee, but you'll have the power to truly influence the success or failure of the restaurant you're responsible for. Jill Nelsen has worked as a restaurant manager in California and Minnesota and has more than 10 years of experience managing fast food restaurants, such as Taco Bell and Rax Roast Beef.
Good restaurant managers are also in high demand right now and, therefore, you don't have to worry about losing your job, because even if this happens, you'll have many other restaurants where you can find a new job very soon. Having employees from diverse cultures can be a challenge for a restaurant manager because language barriers can prevent communication, especially in training situations. Since you'll have to work on weekends and holidays, and sometimes you'll also have to work late at night, you'll have a rather poor work-life balance as a restaurant manager and you may want to secretly switch places with your friends who have 9 to 5 regular jobs. Another advantage of working as a restaurant manager is that you also have high levels of freedom in how to structure your working day.
. Training restaurant staff can be particularly difficult because food service operations tend to be fast, making it difficult to set aside time for employees to catch up. While many of your guests will be friendly and polite, some of them will only be annoying and insulting, and if you don't have thick skin, people can quickly depress you and you may not be satisfied with your long-term career as a restaurant manager. While most managers have at least a high school diploma and many have graduated from college with a degree in hospitality, it's not at all uncommon for someone who didn't finish high school to start at the bottom of the restaurant food chain and make it to management, or even own their own restaurant.
Mid-level positions are those in which managers are still in contact with the lower levels of a restaurant, but begin to learn to organize higher requirements at the same time. The restaurant industry has a high employment rate for immigrants, in part because of typically low wages and also because of the universality of cooking skills. Be prepared to arrive early and stay late most days, and don't be surprised if your relationships with your lower-level friends start to change as you move up the restaurant management food chain, but the good news is, you're almost there. .
