Hospitality and Restaurant Management

A restaurant is not simply a place where people go to eat, it is a business organization, and as anyone who knows the restaurant business can tell you, there is more to making a restaurant work than just serving good food, important though that is. The different staff that work in the restaurant have to be coordinated, supplies have to be ordered, customers kept happy, and the equipment maintained in good working order. There are also administrative tasks to see to, and staff (or "human resources") to manage, recruit and train. Those are just some of things that need doing and it is the job of Restaurant Manager (or Food Services Manager) to see that they are done.

Maybe you already work in a restaurant and have good experience in preparing or serving food, and now you feel you are ready to move on to a manager's job. Or perhaps you want to enter the hospitality business and need to know how to start out.

In either case an associate degree in restaurant and food service management will give you the bedrock of skills you need to give your career opportunities a boost. Experience and the know how it brings are certainly important, and it is sometimes possible to rise to a manger's job without a formal education or training, but you will make it easier for yourself with a degree, and you will also be able to learn more about subjects which, as a hospitality professional, you will find very interesting. Among the subjects you will study are nutrition, menu planning and food preparation, and hygiene, along with accounting, computers, and other business areas, to help develop your management skills. An associate program helps you to combine knowledge on both the food and the administration side of things, and you will need both of these to make a good manager. For those seeking work in this field The Department of Labor notes that job applicants with "an associate's or bachelor's degree in restaurant and institutional food service management should have the best job opportunities." Employers also want to recruit mangers with the right interpersonal skills for dealing with both customers and staff.

Food Service Managers find jobs in a variety of establishments. About a third are self-employed and work in small outlets or independent restaurants. The majority are salaried, and most of those work in full-service restaurants or in fast food and cafeteria outlets. There are also career openings in education, recreation, hospitals and a variety of other locations.