You take orders and make any amendments with speed and accuracy. You fulfill food and drink orders ASAP, process payments, and tidy each table in between guest parties.
But which resume template allows you to best present your versatility, endurance, and customer service skills? What are recruiters looking for that will show them why you should be their new waiter?
Don’t worry, we’ve got this. After helping people in the food industry for years, we’ve developed three waiter resume examples and a cover letter ai generator to assist you on your journey to success!
Related resume examples
What Matters Most: Your Skills & Work History
Your job skills are like the “appetizer” of your resume, giving recruiters a quick taste of what you’re capable of. Pique their appetite for more information about your readiness for the job by basing your skills list on the job description.
Don’t pitch your fine dining experiences too much if you’re applying to work at a small fried food place! Make sure your focus matches the restaurant’s by studying the job description.
Your skills should be as exclusive to the waiter role as possible. That means listing abilities like “guest greeting” instead of “customer service.” Recruiters should be able to review your skills list and immediately know your profession (and your niche within it).
9 most popular waiter skills
- Guest Greeting
- Stripe
- Table Layout
- Wine Pairings
- Reservations
- OpenTable
- Slack
- Restaurant365
- Marketman
Sample waiter work experience bullet points
That’s a nice-looking skills list! But recruiters are hungry for how you’ve applied your abilities in a restaurant, bar, or catered event setting. How do your skills from your previous cashier job translate to your ability to service diners as a waiter?
Work experiences take your skills and put them in context to give a more accurate overview of your capabilities. Make sure you share your best success stories. Every bullet point should nail why you’re a good fit for this job.
And don’t forget metrics! Quantifiable data is the “missing ingredient” on a lot of resumes, so don’t leave ratings, percentages, or other data out of yours.
Here are a few samples:
- Collaborated effectively with kitchen staff and fellow waitstaff, leading to a 21% reduction in order-to-table delivery time
- Participated in Typsy staff training sessions, leading to an improvement in menu knowledge accuracy and an enhanced ability to answer customer queries, earning a personal feedback rating of 4.8/5 stars
- Achieved an average table turnover rate of 12 minutes by leveraging Marketman, leading to a 22% decrease in wait times for customers
- Operated dishwasher machinery and achieved an average of 99% cleanliness and quality of washed items
Top 5 Tips for Your Waiter Resume
- If needed, find translatable experiences
- We know we mentioned this earlier, but it’s worth remembering. Even if previous jobs you’ve worked were unrelated to waiting tables, they still build your credibility if they gained you skills that you use as a waiter.
- Use a prime layout
- Not to boast, but we think our resume templates are pretty good! Try each one and see which looks best with your arrangement of qualifications. Everyone’s balance of restaurant experiences and digital payment skills is different, so pick the template that highlights your best selling points.
- Limit your awesomeness to one page
- No matter how great your waiter experiences are, they probably won’t be read if they’re on page two! Recruiters only have a few seconds for you to wow them, so play around with different sections until everything is streamlined and fits nicely on one page.
- . . . Let’s have a cover letter with that, please!
- If you’ve struggled to pare down your resume to the appropriate length, keep your cover letter in mind. Any experience points that make your resume bulky could be perfect for a cover letter that’ll complement your resume and help land you the job!
- Always prioritize relevance
- It might sound boring, but you should read the job description several times and visit the organization’s website! Your waiter resume will come across as way more well-informed, and your dedication to the role will already be established.
That’s a pretty cool idea, but ensure you keep color use to a minimum. You don’t want to visually distract recruiters from the qualifying information that makes you a uniquely good fit as their next waiter. Keep fonts sleek and simple, too!
All of them, as long as they relate to the job role, like OSHA or a Food Service Management Certificate. These extra credentials will set you apart and fit nicely alongside your education or skills section on your resume.
If you aren’t new to waiting tables, you probably have little to gain from an objective statement. Your experiences might speak strongly enough for themselves. But you might want to utilize an objective if you’re new or a resume summary if your work history is extensive!
