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Bar And Restaurant Job Descriptions

The variety of bar and restaurant jobs is quite remarkable. This puts recruiters and employers in a position where they need to attract candidates with many different skills and levels of experience. At the top, we see managers, leaders, and marketers. At entry-level, we see waiters, waitresses, and kitchen porters. At the heart of every hospitality business are those who have unique or trained skills, such as baristas, bartenders, and chefs.

You might need individuals prepared to work unusual shift patterns, including evenings and weekends. The right candidate may be upbeat and expressive, thoroughly professional, or a natural-born leader or organiser.

Getting your bar and restaurant job description right is vital if you are on the hunt for skilled, experienced, or highly motivated employees. We recommend using a job description template to get your basic framework in place. You can add more specific detail to these to reflect the needs or whims of your bar or restaurant.

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What Do Bar And Restaurant Professionals Do?

Your job descriptions should detail the bar and restaurant functions and how the position fits in your establishment or chain. To hire new team members or restaurant managers, you will need to curate a list of duties to ensure you attract candidates with the right mix of experience and abilities.

Depending on the bar and restaurant type, function and size, staff members may oversee:

  • Delivering excellent customer service
  • Serving customers in the bar or dining room
  • Taking food orders/serving food orders/serve snacks
  • Accepting payments and processing transactions
  • Managing inventory and stock
  • Bar and table cleaning
  • Ensuring food safety standards
  • Business management or hospitality management (Restaurant Manager or Bar Managers)
  • Managing front-of-house staff members (Restaurant Owner or Restaurant Manager)
  • Back-of-house and kitchen team management (Restaurant Owner, Restaurant Manager, or Head Chef)

Bar And Restaurant Role

The duties within a restaurant or bar are completed by individuals in roles titled as:

  • Bar Manager
  • General Manager
  • Bartender
  • Waitress/Waiter/Server
  • Chef/Line Cook
  • Bar Staff
  • Kitchen staff

Bar And Restaurant Responsibilities And Duties

Bar and restaurant duties are the must-do essential functions and high-priority responsibilities of the role. These are the job aspects that you will likely govern the person’s performance on, and as you can imagine, they differ significantly depending on the level of seniority, the role’s function, and whether it is front or back of house.

Bar and restaurant responsibilities and job duties might include:

  • Welcoming customers
  • Taking payment for customer orders/processing payments
  • Balancing the till/reconciling banking
  • Abiding by food safety guidelines
  • Managing inventory and stock
  • Updating marketing materials and signage
  • Confirming the age of customers buying alcohol
  • Emptying rubbish bins
  • Asking for customer feedback
  • Adjusting the seating for larger groups/setting tables
  • Serving food
  • Serving drinks orders/refilling glasses
  • Food preparation to defined portion sizes
  • Creating seasonal menus using seasonal ingredients
  • Preparing alcoholic beverages and non alcoholic beverages
  • Taking food and drinks orders
  • Ensuring high customer satisfaction levels
  • Responding to customer requests in a timely manner
  • Maintaining a clean food prep and bar area
  • Clearing tables
  • Managing people, training, performance, motivation, and ensuring compliance (Bar Manager, Head Chef, Bar Supervisors, etc.)
  • Preparing staff schedules
  • Hiring staff (Bar and Restaurant Owner)

These duties are pretty generic, but you can make the job’s duties more engaging and meaningful by saying how the responsibility should be accomplished. For example, ‘You will be responsible for delivering excellent service by greeting customers, serving them efficiently, promoting new dishes, and answering customer questions.’

Bar And Restaurant Skills

To ensure your restaurant or bar complies with regulations, adopts best practices, and provides a great customer experience, you need to hire staff with the right bar and restaurant skills and proficiencies.

To complete their bar and restaurant duties and responsibilities, staff need hard and soft skills that include:

  • Physical fitness and stamina for working in a fast-paced environment
  • Excellent customer service skills to ensure great satisfaction and effectively handle customer complaints
  • Interpersonal skills for working as part of a team
  • Knowledge of bar inventory for managing resources
  • Numeracy to manage budgets, handle cash, and reconcile banking
  • Culinary art, including food preparation, cooking, and presentation
  • Leadership and people management experience (Restaurant Managers or Bar Managers)
  • Extensive knowledge of cooking stations and other positions for training staff members
  • An ability to handle stress for working in a high-pressure environment
  • Friendly attitude
  • Excellent verbal communication skills
  • Good memory
  • Active listening
  • Decision making
  • Time management
  • Integrity
  • Receptiveness
  • Coaching and mentorship
  • Team-working and collaboration
  • Problem-solving skills
  • Objectivity
  • Planning and organisation
  • Committed
  • Adaptable
  • Influential
  • Multitasking
  • Detail-orientated/attention to detail
  • Market research, marketing, and presentation skills (Managers)
  • Business acumen (Managers)
  • Willingness to work weekends

Bar And Restaurant Qualifications And Education

The formal education and qualifications depend on the role and level of seniority, but might include:

  • A Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration (generally preferred for a Restaurant Manager or Bar Manager job)
  • Level 3 Diploma in Hospitality Supervision and Leadership (General Manager)
  • Level 4 Diploma in Hospitality Leadership (General Manager)
  • Level 3 Diploma In Advanced Professional Cookery (Chef)
  • Level 4 Diploma in Professional Culinary Arts (Chef)

Required Bar And Restaurant Experience And Training

A restaurant and bar team candidate might have previous experience using a POS system and should be computer and MS Office proficient. Junior bar operations staff may have completed a Hospitality Team Member Intermediate Apprenticeship.

Bar And Restaurant Job Description FAQs

Here we answer your questions on bar and restaurant roles, job titles, duties, and skills.

WHAT DOES A BAR AND RESTAURANT PERSON DO?

A bar and restaurant person provides a drinks and food service, with tasks either back or front of house. They may serve customers as a professional food server or prepare dishes in the kitchen.

WHAT ARE THE BAR AND RESTAURANT ROLES?

Bar and restaurant roles include bar manager, restaurant manager, head chef, bar person, waiter, waitress, sous chef, etc. If you have a bar or restaurant vacancy, advertising on job boards will help you find qualified candidates.

WHAT SHOULD I INCLUDE IN A BAR MANAGER JOB DESCRIPTION?

Within the bar manager job description, you should list the general duties, skills, and leadership responsibilities. The many responsibilities might include overseeing operations, ensuring bar workers contribute towards an exemplary dining experience, and handling complaints for staff and customers.

HOW DO I HIRE A BAR AND RESTAURANT PERSON?

Job advertising for bar and restaurant jobs will vary depending on if the position is for general bar and restaurant staff (front of house), cooks (back of house), or management and leadership. Your recruitment strategy might encompass advertising on general and specialist job boards, social media sites, and for word of mouth referrals. Your hiring strategy might also include having a presence at industry conferences or online with professional bodies and organisations.

Crucial elements that will affect hiring success include writing an effective job description and selecting the proper job title. A Bar Manager job description will, of course, be very different from a Bartender job description or Barista job description. However, a common thread for any job description is the vision and values of the company and why it is a great place to work. You can view a Bar Manager job description, Restaurant Manager job description, and a sample job description for all other positions in our job description library.

Flat fee recruitment solutions continue to deliver the best results when hiring staff to work in bars, restaurants, or fine dining establishments.

WHAT IS A BAR AND RESTAURANT JOB DESCRIPTION?

A bar and restaurant job description is a document that sets out the role’s duties, tasks, and key skills. Putting these in black and white is vital and will help you find the ideal bar person or restaurant staff for a position that directly affects the customer experience, your sales and profit, and your team.

An effective job description should be transparent and clearly set out who you are, who you want, what they will do, and why hospitality industry personnel might want to work for you. It helps tremendously to use language and jargon that connects with and engages your audience.

When you get all of this right and include the best words to use when writing restaurant and bar job descriptions, you will get job applications from qualified candidates that closely match your ideal person profile.

HOW DO I WRITE JOB DESCRIPTIONS FOR RESTAURANT ROLES?

When writing a front-of-house or back-of-house job description, either for advertising a job or an internal job specification, you need to focus on 5 main criteria:

  1. What are the key jobs, tasks, and duties required for a bar and restaurant position
  2. Consider all the job responsibilities required for a bar and restaurant role
  3. What key skills the person must have for the job
  4. What personality traits the person must have to work in the bar and restaurant industry
  5. Appropriate and relevant education and qualifications

These five criteria should help you build a picture of your ideal candidate. Good questions to consider that will help you write a concise bar manager or restaurant server job description that stands apart from others (essential in the current competitive job market), and attracts candidates of a high calibre, include:

  • What value does this role bring to your customer or kitchen team?
  • How does the role align with your company culture, values, and mission?
  • How does this role differ from other positions?
  • How is this role similar to other positions?
  • What are the minimum bar and restaurant skills or transferable skills?
  • What are examples of your goals, standards, and targets?

Suppose you are not hands-on with hospitality management or highly familiar with the company’s food, drinks, or services. In that case, it can help to interview one of your bar or restaurant managers, the head chef, or an experienced food server to gain a greater understanding of the role.

A word about jargon: The phrase ‘jargon’ has good and bad connotations, and if it isn’t carefully considered, it may deter suitable candidates from applying. Ask yourself if words and phrases are company or industry exclusive, or recognisable by individuals who may have valuable transferable skills refined in an alternative business sector.

Furthermore, if you are hiring for senior-level positions, such as bar manager or restaurant manager, you should expect candidates to have a greater vocabulary and understanding of industry jargon. However, if you are hiring entry-level back or front-of-house staff, consider being as straightforward and transparent as possible.

WHAT BAR AND RESTAURANT TASKS SHOULD I INCLUDE IN JOB DESCRIPTIONS?

The tasks of bar and food service staff are any other activities that they occasionally complete or on a daily basis. These are usually subsidiary tasks such as administrative tasks and activities required to complete job duties.

It is tempting to leave some of the more ‘mundane’ tasks out to make your jobs sound more attractive, but this can lead to trouble down the road as you may recruit an individual that is not a perfect match or willing to carry out certain tasks. If you hire the wrong candidates for your business, its employees, customers, reputation, and financial performance may suffer. The employee might leave your company, and you are back to square one, requiring another investment in recruitment and training.

If you get to the end of the process outlined here and find that your job description is too long and concise has gone out the window, it is time to review your first draft. To bring things back into line, you should delete unnecessary phrases and fluff, remove prepositional phrases, focus on what is role critical, and refrain from putting your entire ‘about us’ page in your content.

HOW DO I ENGAGE BAR AND RESTAURANT JOB CANDIDATES?

As a final note for employers and recruiters, it is crucial to remember that while a job description is about what and who you want, describing this alone will not create an inbox full of eager candidates willing to comply. A good job description and job advert must go beyond the duties, skills, education, qualifications, tasks, and traits that you want and communicate the position’s value to job seekers.

Large and small restaurants should convey its employee value propositions to engage candidates, highlighting both monetary and other benefits. Benefits that will entice qualified job seekers to apply might include:

  • Stating the average salary range rather than saying ‘competitive salary’
  • Focusing on work-life balance
  • Flexible working – does the role have a remote element (Managers), and is the shift pattern flexible or suitable for a person who studies or has other commitments during the day
  • Further training opportunities
  • Career development opportunities
  • The quality of facilities, equipment, or services
  • How the company’s values align with those of employees or its customers

Bar And Restaurant Job Description Examples And Samples

We recommend creating your bar and restaurant job description using one of the samples and examples below.

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