Job Opportunities for Food Service Managers

Job Opportunities for Food Service Managers

by | May 16, 2016 | Career

While Cooks and Chefs prepare the food and Servers serve it up, it’s up to Managers to ensure that the show runs smoothly. And it’s not just in the restaurant industry that they’re needed. Everyone needs to eat, and because of that, food service managers are a part of most industries, further increasing the number of management opportunities available to those looking. They are the conductors that keep all the moving parts working together and this integral role equates to some great perks, including a high paycheck and job security! Don’t worry, we’ve got the specifics.

Opportunities by Industry

The responsibilities and background of food service managers typically make them the highest paid professionals on the restaurant floor and food service industry in general according to figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The average salary for food service managers is $53,640 per year ($25.79 per hour). The lowest paid 10 percent earn under $28,780 per year ($13.84 per hour) while those at the top can make more than $83,010 per year ($39.91 per hour).

When it comes to available positions, the best opportunities for food service managers are, of course, in restaurants and other eating places, where nearly 142,100 of these professionals are employed. Next comes special food services with 12,300 positions, followed by traveler accommodations with 9,020 jobs.

As for salary, it’s outside restaurant industry that you’ll get paid top dollar.

The industry paying the most for these professionals is insurance, where food service managers make an average of $94,330 per year to take care of in-house cafeterias and food service facilities.

Coming in second is the real estate industry, averaging $83,100 annually. Ranking third is healthcare, specifically specialty hospitals where the average annual salary runs at $82,120.

Opportunities by Location

California, the most populous state, comes in first in terms of necessity with 35,510 food service manager jobs. Texas, the second most populous state, has the second highest employment level at 12,010 jobs, followed by Tennessee, where 10,540 food service managers work.

When in comes to cities, the most opportunities are available in the Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Glendale, California area with 9,970 positions. Offering 5,130 jobs is the Chicago, Naperville, and Arlington Heights, Illinois, division, followed by Atlanta, Sandy Sprint, and Roswell, Georgia, with 4,630 managers.

The state with the highest pay for food service managers is New Jersey, averaging $71,440 per year. Delaware ranks a close second at an average of $71,130 annually. In third is Rhode Island at $69,000 yearly.

Among cities, Tallahassee, Florida tops the pay chart, averaging $84,050 per year, followed by the Atlantic City and Hammonton area in New Jersey where the average salary for food service managers is $80,930 yearly. In third is Wilmington, Delaware, and the surrounding metropolitan area in Maryland and New Jersey, at a mean $79,260 a year.

Projections

According to the BLS, food service manager positions is forecast to increase by 5 percent from 2014 to 2024, the reasons being a growing population and an improving economy: more people with more money to spend on eating out, food delivery, and takeout.

And, to meet this expected demand, more restaurants, catering services, and other food service establishments will open, requiring the expertise of managers to run efficiently.

Managers with many years of experience in the food service industry will have the best opportunities. As experienced managers leave the profession, the majority of job openings will be to replace these individuals, especially in upscale locations that pay higher salaries.

If these figures tempt you into finding better restaurant employment for yourself, search for opportunities sirvo.com/search →

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Serving Tables for Tuition

Serving Tables for Tuition

by | May 11, 2016 | Career

Finding a job that gives you the flexibility you need to make it to class on time and get your school work done is challenging in and of itself. Add getting paid enough to cover tuition and/or living expenses, groceries, and still have a little fun money left over, well that’s near impossible…unless you land a job as a server.

Serving tables is a great way to make some extra cash while you’re in college. Plus, you can learn some important business skills that will be an asset when you graduate and move on to a job in your field (or another job in the restaurant industry). Here are some things you need to know about serving tables for tuition so you can make the most of your time in the restaurant industry.

Scheduling ⌚

A tough thing about being a college student is that your schedule changes every few months. If you’re really concerned about finding a place to work in between your schedule from semester to semester, consider looking at 24/7 dining establishments.

These are great because they need employees at all hours of the day, so it’s easy to work around a class schedule.

Another perk of the 24/7 restaurants is that they’re few and far between and a hot commodity on college campuses, so you’ll be busy for the majority of your shift.

Living off tips ?

We’ve all heard horror stories of large tables that barely leave a tip after taking up a couple hours of a server’s time. While there’s no guarantee that you won’t experience this type of behavior, know that customers who stiff their servers are not the norm.

According to an article in the Atlantic, while the median tip amount varies based on location and gender, on average servers make between $7 and $13 per hour in tips.

Get to know your customers ?

Get to know your customers, especially your regulars. Working in the restaurant industry is a fantastic way to network, even though that’s rarely talked about.

Think about it: people from all walks of life go out to eat, which means you’ll have the chance to rub elbows with those who work in all types of industries.

You might make a connection with someone in the field in which you’ll someday work.

Secondly, you may make a great friend or even meet your future husband or wife while serving. Especially in college when you may have fewer close by friends than in the past, working in a restaurant is a great place to meet new people!

Fine-tune your people skills ?

You may think you understand people, but working in a restaurant is one of the best ways to interact with people from all walks of life. You’ll be serving the most polite and generous people along with the rudest (and cheapest). And you’ll have to do it all with a smile on your face and in a calm tone of voice.

During those rough shifts, keep in mind that all of this interpersonal experience will help you in your future career. It’s inevitable that you’ll work with a wide variety of clients, co-workers and managers, and being able to handle their personalities and quirks will lead to higher job satisfaction and make you an invaluable asset.

It could pan out to a career you love ?

You may not have dreamt of being a server as a little kid, but there are a lot of great career options within the restaurant industry. From Marketing to Management, a graduate degree combined with restaurant experience can turn into a lucrative, long-term career.

Keep an open mind and it may lead to something extraordinary.

When you can, take on extra responsibilities. You might end up with a promotion, which would mean extra cash in your pocket along with a new world of career opportunities available after graduation!

Working in a restaurant can be a lot of fun, especially if you like your co-workers and are able to work around your school schedule. Along with making enough money to cover your tuition, living expenses, and/or entertainment, you’ll be gaining valuable career skills that will help you after you graduate.

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How Skype & Digital Technology are Advancing Hospitality Hiring

How Skype & Digital Technology are Advancing Hospitality Hiring

by | May 9, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

Choosing hospitality as a career has some great benefits, but, in the past, the hiring process and HR in general has not been a strong point. However, that’s all changing with the advancement of digital technology specifically made for the industry.

Take Skype for example, which is being utilized to conduct interviews remotely helping job seekers to apply for more jobs and allowing businesses to expand their talent network.

Skype is the most accessible video communications technology on the market and it’s making interviews possible from any distance. One of the benefits of working in the restaurant and hospitality industry is the ability to find work in any city across the world. In any given month,

In any given month, workers who are willing to relocate are looking for these job openings, but the holdup is not being able to get in front of managers.

Skype is changing that by making it possible for hiring managers to conduct interviews with prospective applicants at any time and from anywhere.

The interview is critical in any industry, but especially in hospitality, where workers not only have to get along with co-workers but also interact with patrons.

Skype enables decision makers to assess potential hires in real-time. Not to mention, it can be used from a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet.

As Skype is creating an innovative solution for interviewing, Sirvo is using technology to streamline the application process.

Sirvo is a premium recruitment service for the hospitality industry, where finding qualified applicants and choice companies to work for has never been easier. If you’re interested in learning more about our service, please contact us today at [email protected].

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Why Master Sommeliers Are Going Corporate

Why Master Sommeliers Are Going Corporate

by | May 2, 2016 | IndiNews

The atmosphere and wine selections at this year’s closing dinner for the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers reflected the commercial path that many of the 12 Master Sommeliers in attendance chose to follow after achieving the diploma. No longer as familiar with the restaurant floor and patrons as they are with the wine wholesalers, producers and marketing teams that employ them, the Sommeliers who paired the evening’s courses turned away from the semi-oxidized, organically fermented selections of years past in favor of more commercial choices.

It’s clear that this new generation of Master Sommeliers is charting its own path, chasing the ‘corporate dollar’ rather than the choicest wines. The question is why.

According to Chris Blanchard, the former Sommelier at Napa Valley restaurant REDD, after achieving the Master Sommelier diploma, it is difficult to resist the siren call of the larger paycheck and regular schedule offered by the corporate wine world as opposed to the demanding hours, uncertain pay and insufficient personal time that goes along with working in the food and beverage service.

However, for some Master Sommeliers, the plan all along was to leave the stress of a restaurant career behind by going corporate.

While a Sommelier who has no other commitments beyond the restaurant doors may tolerate the long hours, low pay and poor work-life balance, those with families tend to grow tired of constantly chasing the most profitable positions at all costs.

Jay James, going from Director of Wine at Bellagio Las Vegas’ wine program to Brand Ambassador of Chappellet Winery, can relate to this sentiment. As he explains, “One must typically go to where the best jobs are for maximum income potential, and that can be inconvenient or the location undesirable.”

For Doug Frost, a managing partner of the Beverage Alcohol Resource program and one of only four people in the world to currently hold both the Master Sommelier and Master of Wine diplomas, the move away from restaurant life had more to do with what he was doing than what he was not.

In fact, Frost says that if the job had only been about working the restaurant floor, he’d still be there.

But that was not the case. In addition to the work he did as the restaurant’s Sommelier, he also, “spent a lot of time worrying about the POS program […] and fussing about the price of Pepsi.”

Still, for all of the benefits that the corporate wine world has to offer over restaurant work, some think of going corporate as selling out. According to Blanchard, Master Sommeliers that enter the commercial sphere are playing straight into the dubious hands of the corporation.

“They hire an MS because it adds some kind of legitimacy to wines they produce […] these are the same kinds of wines that many of the new Masters would never have even considered for their wine programs when they were working the floor.”

Whether the new class of Master Sommeliers will bring a touch of art to the commercial wine world or become absorbed by it remains to be seen, but what is evident is that the ‘corporate dollar’ is not the only reason for shifting career paths. However, the way the wine trend is progressing, with an increasing demand for accessible wines, more may take the commercial path than would ever have considered doing so before.

Catering Company ‘Eat Offbeat’ Staffs Kitchen With Refugees

Catering Company ‘Eat Offbeat’ Staffs Kitchen With Refugees

by | Apr 25, 2016 | IndiNews

From traditional Nepalese dumplings and Iraqi baba ghanouj to heaping containers of East African lentils, the variety of authentic cuisines prepared in the kitchen of New York City catering and delivery company Eat Offbeat spans the globe.

Even more refreshing? So do the men and women who make up its kitchen staff. In fact, all seven of Eat Offbeat’s employees came to the United States as asylum seekers or refugees who fled other countries. And, not one of them had any prior professional culinary experience.

One of the company’s two founders, Manal Kahi, who plans to continue to hire and train refugees to work in the kitchen, explains that her motivation is partly humanitarian and partly business-savvy. She and her co-founder/brother, Wissam Kahi, believe that in a city saturated with excellent ethnic cuisine, their hiring practices lend them a way to stand out from the crowd.

We are really focusing on these new and off-the-beaten-path cuisines. Refugees are coming from countries that have cuisines we don’t really know…it’s not cuisines that you find at every corner.

The experience of being an international transplant in New York is one that Manal understands well having moved to the city from Lebanon as a student. Coincidentally, in 2014 when she started considering the possibility of running her own kitchen, Syrians had begun fleeing their homes in droves heading for her native Lebanon.

Ruminating on how she could contribute to the humanitarian efforts to aid the Syrian refugees, Manal stumbled upon the idea of employing them to make the traditional recipes she had come to love.

I was feeling very hopeless about it. When I got this idea of making hummus, I thought maybe Syrian refugees could be making it.

While other aspects of her eventual business plan changed, the idea of employing refugees remained. To get the ball rolling, Manal, having recognized the impact that an industry influencer could bring to her cause, enlisted the help of high-profile chef Juan Suarez de Lezo. By then partnering with the International Rescue Committee, an organization with a humanitarian mission to resettle refugees and asylum seekers, Manal and her brother were able get staffing underway.

Now, only five months into their soft launch phase, Eat Offbeat is already preparing nearly 200 meals each week out of a rented commercial kitchen in Queens. While catering is only currently available for groups of at least 10 people, plans are in the works to open up delivery to individuals.

As for the menu, that is expected to change as well, with Manal planning to take dishes out of the rotation if and when the employee who makes the recipe leaves her employ.

We want to keep it tied to them.

While every employee learns how to make recipes other than his or her own, Manal shares that retiring dishes from the menu is a nod to the fact that Eat Offbeat is just as much about celebrating people as it is about the food those people make.

Wherever they go from here, it seems clear that Manal and her brother have a bright future in the culinary industry. After a successful start in New York, any other market should prove child’s play. As Frank Sinatra famously sang, if you can make it there you’ll make it anywhere.