Entertainment Magazine: Dining: Education: Culinary

Culinary Career Profile: Restaurant Manager

Restaurant managers have extremely challenging but rewarding jobs that require extensive education, formal training, and experience.

On the one hand, they get to play the consummate host, designing memorable culinary experiences for discerning diners around the country.

On the other hand, competition in the restaurant industry is extremely fierce.  With so many options, so many logistics, and so many variables, restaurants go under all the time.

As a restaurant manager, you're responsible for hiring staff, marketing the restaurant, handling public relations, handling customer complaints, managing the budget, balancing the books, monitoring health codes and safety inspections, setting the menu, designing the interior, and everything in between.

For those who love creative challenges and outside the box thinking, restaurant management can be an ideal career field.

Going to Culinary School to Become a Restaurant Manager

As a general rule, a manager should know the business.

This is as true for technology firms as it is for restaurants.  This is why culinary school is so useful for anybody who wants to become a restaurant manager.  For not only must you know business administration, accounting, marketing, public relations, human resources, conflict resolution, and health codes, but you also must know a great deal about ingredient selection, pastries, baking, gourmet foods, wines, and countless other areas germane to fine dining.

So when you enroll in a culinary school, make sure you follow the restaurant management track so that your education and curriculum will combine both the business aspects and the culinary arts aspects of the industry.

A bachelors degree is often sufficient, but a masters degree is the preferred path for this field.  In this way, you can hope to make the current median salary of $50,000 a year that many restaurant managers earn. 

This amount can go up or down considerably depending on your expertise, training, locale, and clientele. 

Restaurant managers who work in fine dining establishments in major metropolises tend to fare better than those who work in restaurant chains located in suburban or rural locations.

Web Links:
US Department of Labor
Star Chefs