Ask the Accounting Community

Food and hospitality is a booming industry providing a high potential for young aspirants who are about to join the workforce. And a restaurant job can be an excellent place to start as it offers varied positions depending on the skill sets required for a particular role. While specific roles like the chef require formal training, others such as waiter would require only an on-job training. So you can look at these options while performing your job application review to decide on career choices.

For a restaurant to operate successfully, it takes a whole team of individuals who possess a variety of skills and a particular set of talents. The hotel and restaurant industry has an array of jobs ranging from front of the house to the back as described below.

Front of the house restaurant position:

Workers who are positioned at the front of the house are expected to be people friendly with a great personality. A right front of the house team is made up of individuals who exhibit a great set of customer service skills, have a friendly attitude and can positively handle customer complaints. Servers, hosts, bartenders, and barbacks together constitute the front-of-the-house staff. If you are looking to go into this position make sure that you know which concept of restaurant you are comfortable in the most. It is a rule of thumb, that whatever be the restaurant concept the front office staff has to know few basics such as food menu and beverage selections and should be equipped to handle the customers efficiently.

Here is a peek into pay scales for some of the front office positions:

• Front office manager – The average salary is 22,592 pounds a year.
• Front desk receptionist – They get paid somewhere around 12,517 pounds annually.
• Front desk agent – On an average their pay scale is 21,540 pounds per year.

Back of the house restaurant position:

The back staff of a restaurant doesn't work directly with the customers and public, but it is important for them to have good communication skills and have an effective team management skill. The back of the restaurant jobs includes chef, cooks, prep cooks and so on. Along with these it also consists of the back office staff who do backend jobs like accountants, maintenance team and other behind the scene people.

Here is a glance at the salary scale of few coveted positions:

• Executive chef – The average payout for the administrative head chef job is 32,500 pounds.
• Cooks – Cooks get paid a salary of 17,000 pounds a year.
• Deputy Manager – A restaurant deputy manager gets paid around 25,794 pounds a year.
• Restaurant manager – The average payout for this position is 33,224 pounds annually.

The jobs in this sector are many and can be lucrative as well, especially for those who are naturally equipped with the desired talents such as interpersonal and intrapersonal skills which would help achieve an excellent career growth.