Restaurant managers work in some of the most glamorous, exciting environments you can imagine. From luxury resorts in exotic locations to high-powered conference centers to the hottest restaurants, hotel and restaurant managers are working behind the scenes to ensure the excellence of their establishment. If you are looking for a challenging, rewarding career and enjoy working with people, hotel or restaurant management could be right for you. The more people travel, the greater the need for Hotel/Restaurant Managers. As operations become more complex, employers are putting more emphasis on specialized training. The Penn Foster Hotel/Restaurant Manager program can give you a real advantage over others. As a Hotel/Restaurant Managers you can work in restaurants, bed and breakfasts, or even manage franchises for major hotel chains. You might be assigned to organize a newly built or purchased facility, or to reorganize an existing one. Managers determine room rates, oversee restaurant operations, and supervise the staff.

Being a restaurant manager is a lifestyle, not a job. If managers are going to succeed, they will put in 50 to 80 hours per week with high stress levels at times. But once you get everything going, it can be a fun career with very good pay. Employers suggest that potential candidates should consider the following: What type of restaurant business are you going into? There is a big difference between fine dining, family style, fast food and a sports bar or restaurant atmosphere. These restaurants attract different employees. A fine dining establishment might draw more experienced, mature employees, while a fast food restaurant or sports bar might interest younger ones. Do you want to be a floor manager, a back-of-the-house manager or a general manager? Each of these positions requires different skills.

When pursuing jobs, ask potential employers how long they have been in business, where they see the business growing, what opportunities exist for advancement and what type of manager-training programs they have. If someone wants a career in this field, try getting in with a franchise for training and a stable income, many employers will advise. After three to five years, you can look at a privately held restaurant where you can go in as a general manager and demand a pay of $60,000-plus for your expertise or partnership.

The Positives
Restaurant management is great if you like a lot of variety in what you do, like to work really hard and enjoy working with people. It is a fairly easy field to break into without investing in an education; however you can move up faster and not start at the very bottom if you do have an education.

The upside to restaurant management lies in the opportunity to advance quickly, the challenge and the chance to acquire an array of management skills. Nelsen suggests asking yourself these 10 questions to help you decide if this is the career for you:
Do I like to work with many different types of people, both as coworkers and as customers?
Will I mind working all hours of the day and night?
Do I like to motivate people to do their best?
Will I enjoy the pressures of making a budget, staffing the restaurant and managing daily operations?
Will I mind people calling me with questions on my time off?
What do I picture for the future, my family and how we spend our time? Do a restaurant manager's hours fit into this vision?
Am I highly motivated?
Do I like to work hard?
Do I like to reach daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals?
What does this career offer that others do not?

One last thing to remember about a career in restaurant management is that with all the training and experience you get, you can move to many different industries and careers, for example, you can go from restaurant management to office management, to sales management to bank accounting, publishing and marketing.

Leading by example is a single principle for any success. Passing information through proper leadership is essential to the harmony and relationships among your employees. Whether you are working at the Front of the House or the Rear of the House, leadership sets the course for the direction of your operation. Knowing the basic principles of leadership will help you in every imaginable way in the restaurant business.

Here are a few tips for future restaurant managers: Take a moment to review your facility and operation. Does your facility accommodate critical relationships established by the flow of food? Or, do your servers have to walk through the prep or production areas to access the ware washing area? Are your servers and kitchen employees able to move freely? Or, are they always engaged in "right of way" debates? When a facility is designed based on the flow of food, the quality of service, risk of cross contamination, and employee morale all improve. If your facility utilizes this approach to design, you can attest to the results. If not, consider how you can improve the current configuration or operational procedures to better follow the flow of food.

Menu marketing is an important aspect for the success of any foodservice establishment. Menus are statements of the food and beverage items that are provided by a restaurant based on consumer wants, needs and demands. Menus can be interpreted as a list of products that a restaurant offers, and it can be a piece of literature or display used to communicate the products to the customer. From a marketing view point, menus are more than the conventional function of a communications and selling tool but also a tool that must be formatted to increase restaurant profits. Menu engineering provides the manager with information about a menu item's profitability, as well as popularity, so that proactive planning, recipe design and customer pricing decisions can be made. Menu engineering is not a substitute for proper purchasing, food rotation, standard recipes or any of the other basic kitchen controls that can negatively impact your costs. Rather it is a method of evaluating every item on your menu relative to its present contribution to bottom line dollars, thereby allowing managers to recognize the items they want to sell!

Freelance writer for over eleven years.Restaurant Uniforms Chef Uniforms Dickies Medical Uniform Scrubs


The Diverse Food Service Career
The food service industry generally encompasses the places, institutions, and companies responsible for any meal eaten away from home. This industry includes restaurants, school and hospital cafeterias, catering operations, and many other formats. Major foodservice providers include Compass Group, Sodexho, Aramark, and the Crown Group.

The companies that supply foodservice operators are called foodservice distributors. Foodservice hard goods like ovens and refrigerators are often sold by large buying groups.

Some companies manufacture products in both consumer and foodservice versions. The consumer version usually comes in individual-sized packages with elaborate label design for retail sale. The foodservice version is packaged in a much larger industrial size and often lacks the colorful label designs of the consumer version.

Catering is the business of providing food service at a remote site. A mobile caterer serves food directly from a vehicle or cart designed for the purpose. Mobile catering is common at outdoor events (such as concerts), workplaces, and downtown business districts.

An event caterer serves food with wait staff at dining tables or sets up a self-serve buffet. The food may be prepared on site or shipped in but often some combination depending on the menu and facilities at the site. The event caterer staff is responsible not only for preparing the food but also setting up the dining area and waiting tables. This service is typically provided at banquets, conventions, and weddings. Any event where all the attendees are provided with food and drinks or sometimes only hors d'oeuvres is often called a catered event.

A catering company or specialist is expected to know not just food preparation, but how to make it attractive. A wedding requires working with the entire theme or color scheme of the wedding.

Much catering is sold on a per-person basis, where adding additional people is a flat price per person. Keeping the cost of the food and supplies below this is required to make a profit on the catering.

Industrial catering includes providing food for airline passengers, schools, prisons and other institutional settings. It can include contract management of client foodservice facilities. Airlines often have divisions or hire third parties to provide food for passengers. Food on airlines has dropped in frequency of flights it's offered on. Today a drink and snack item are common on shorter flights. Airline food is often seen as bad by the people who eat it.

A waiter is a male who "waits" on tables, often at a restaurant or a bar. A female who "waits" on tables is often called a waitress. The gender-neutral server and collective waitstaff can also be used.

Waiting tables is one of the most common occupations in the U.S. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that, as of May 2005, there are over 2.2 million persons employed as waiters and waitresses in the U.S.

Waiters' duties include preparing tables for a meal, taking customers' orders and serving drinks and food in a restaurant. Depending on the restaurant, other less common duties may be required, such as singing birthday songs to customers who are celebrating a birthday. A theme restaurant may even require waiters to dance (e.g. Joe's Crab Shack). There are now event caterers that outsource waiter/s/esess to events and specific functions.

"Silver Service" waiters are specially trained to serve at banquets or high-end restaurants. They follow specific rules of service and it is a skilled job. They generally wear black and white with a long, white apron (extending from the waist to ankle).

The head waiter or waitress is in charge of the staff of waiters and/or waitresses, and is also responsible for assigning seating. This person can also be referred to as the mae d'h?. Some restaurants employ busboys or busgirls to assist the waiters and/or waitresses.

In the United States and some other Western countries, it is customary to tip a waiter or waitress after a meal. In the U.S., waiters and waitresses, like other "tipped" employees, can be paid a lower minimum wage than other occupations. For example, waiters and waitresses in Georgia are generally paid around $2.13 an hour.

In contrast, waiters and waitresses in many East Asian countries refuse tips, which are sometimes even considered an insult. Many cultures in the region believe that leaving a tip implies that the waiter or waitress is not being paid enough by his or her employer.

A cocktail waitress is a type of server who specializes in bringing drinks to patrons of bars, casinos, comedy clubs, live music venues and other drinking establishments. Casinos traditionally dress their cocktail waitresses in fancy outfits with very short skirts, while less flashy establishments require waitstaff attire. A tip of $1/drink is customary.

A bartender serves beverages behind a bar in a bar, pub, tavern, or similar establishment. This usually includes alcoholic beverages of some kind, such as beer (both draft and bottled), wine, and/or cocktails, as well as soft drinks or other non-alcoholic beverages.

In addition to their core beverage-serving responsibility, bartenders also:
-take payment from customers (and sometimes the waiters or waitresses);
-maintain the liquor, garnishes, glassware, and other supplies or inventory for the bar (though some establishments have barbacks which help with these duties);
-serve food to customers sitting at the bar.
-In establishments where cocktails are served, bartenders are expected to be able to properly mix hundreds to thousands of different drinks.

A cook is a person employed to prepare food for consumption, whether in a restaurant or institution, for a caterer or in domestic service. A fully qualified, experienced cook is sometimes referred to as a chef (French 'chief'), although within the professional kitchen, the term chef is reserved only for the executive chef or chef de cuisine (French 'kitchen chief', i.e. kitchen master). A short order cook is a cook who prepares fast, easily-assembled meals to order, often working in a diner or cafe.

Cooks may learn their trade through apprenticeship, particularly in smaller establishments and staffed households, often starting as a kitchen boy, but that lowest rank, as the name indicates traditionally filled by minors, doesn't have to lead to a cook's career. The top restaurants nowadays hire from the graduates of professional cooking courses at culinary schools; these almost always involve some form of apprenticeship as well. In general, most restaurants have a hierarchy of cooking staff.

Freelance writer for over eleven years.
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Spa Career/Management
Guide to Making It on the Spa Industry
Just because spas offer its customers full relaxation and respite from the daily stress and hustle and bustle of the metropolis, it doesn't necessarily mean that the people working behind it are on Zen mode 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In fact, managing a spa or taking on a spa career comes with as many guidelines and technicalities as the average Windows operating system. While it may seem odd that we compare something deemed stress-relieving to something a little stress-inducing, this is the reality. A spa is considered a place for rest -- but this only applies to the customer. For the people behind it, a spa is busy one-way street.

If you're thinking about entering the spa world and taking on a career as an aesthetician, therapist, manager, or whatever, do not be disheartened just yet. Sure, while it's true that running a spa is quite stressful, it can also be very rewarding.

A Growing Industry
Statistics shows that the job opportunities in the spa industry are among the fastest growing in the world. This is not a surprise especially with the rising population, growing consumer demand for physical excellence and beauty and quadrupling personal incomes all over the world. This is what globalization has done to most industries and, luckily, the spa world is among those that are likely to reap the greatest benefits.

It is for this reason that a lot of people are entering training programs to become manicurists, massage therapists, cosmetologists, barbers, electrologist, skin care specialists, and the like. Schools offering such courses are popping up everywhere, each offering a distinct style that when put together have only one thing in mind, that is, customer satisfaction. A spa's greatest goal is to make each one of its clients happy when they step out. A spa is every distressed urban jungle hound's wonderland and nirvana.

Easing the Worry Out
As mentioned, a spa's goal is provide pampering. Thus, if you are seeking a career in this industry, you must also have this goal in mind. Sure, while the job opportunities in this industry is growing at an alarming rate, you must also know what you're getting into and, at least, enjoy what you're doing. For how can you ensure complete customer satisfaction when you yourself are not having fun in the process?

You see, working in a spa entails a job that entails touch and personal interaction with the client. Hence, a sunny or at least serene disposition is required of people who hold spa-related jobs. When customers go to a spa, they expect to be treated like royalty and positive energy. That's why even if you've had a huge fight with your significant other right before you went to work, this should never reflect on how you perform your job.

Indeed, it is probably safe to say that spa employees are the best actors in the business industry, next to sales people, because their work requires them to temper their feelings and set aside their personal lives while they're doing their jobs. As an effective spa therapist, you must be able to ward off the negative and wear the positive while you're on your shift. This is quite challenging. However, if you do want to succeed and thrive in this industry, you should be prepared to do this once in a while. Otherwise, don't have this job at all.

Service is Key
If you love what you're doing, it will be easier for you to become good at it when the time comes. While money is key motivator to performing well, it should not be the only reason why you'd want to work in a spa. You can channel all your negative energy into taking additional spa-related courses and, instead, challenging this negativity by trying to advance in the field. For instance, if you're the resident hairdresser, you might want to vent your frustration by enrolling in advanced hairstyling classes to further your career.

The key is to channel all your doubts into something that's productive and constructive, and toward something that would help you grow further in your chosen field. This is not exclusive to spa careers, though, as you should practice this with any situation in your life.

The sooner you decide that you want a career in the spa industry, the better, because you will get an early headstart in terms of training and getting the right mindset. Just because working in a spa entails working in a quiet environment that doesn't seem to have known conflict during its lifetime, it doesn't mean you have to scrimp on the preparations. Again, because the spa industry is turning global faster than you can say, well, 'global', you must learn to ride with the times and get all the training you can get your hands on.

Of course, as with any career, you should know what you're getting into before you 'decide' that a certain job is right for you. A spa career is no walk in the park. It will stress you out. However, if you find that this is your calling, that you are meant to be in the service industry, then you should exercise all means possible to get it done and done well.

If you need more advice on whether a spa career is perfect for you, assess your personality first or seek the advice of a career counsellor. You never know what's best unless you take an outside looking in approach to your career options. Or you could go visit a nearby spa and observe how its staff and crew operate, and note how well they keep their composures and energy despite the entire day's backbreaking work load. After that, if you still think that you're fit for the job, then by all means, go for it. Good luck!

Freelance writer for over eleven years.
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