what do food service managers do?

Food can be adventurous, as when a television host eats animal oddities from around the globe. Food can be nostalgic, with Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s house. At its most primal, though, food sustains us.

Every day, the National School Lunch Program delivers low-cost or no-cost meals to 31 million school children. Without those meals ten percent of this country’s population would be hungry. Few Americans know the deep, unsettling hunger of eating only one meal a day. Part of the reason our nation’s children do not go hungry is because of the hard work of food service managers. Yet the noble work of these men and women, in school cafeterias and beyond, is often overlooked. Sure, we grudgingly remember them May with School Nutrition Employee Week, and on September 25 with National Food Service Employee Day. But what do food service managers do, really, that deserves any commemoration? 

Food Service Managers Run the Show

We may think restaurants are run by chefs. Not so, usually. The kitchen is run by the chef, yes, but the overall operation is run by a food service manager: 

  • Hiring and firing in the kitchen and front of house
  • Budgeting and buying meats, vegetables, fruits, beverages, breads, and condiments
  • Changing menus
  • Supervising wait staff
  • Ordering linens, napkins, plates, glasses, uniforms

Sometimes a chef-owner fulfills the duties of a food service manager, though this is exhausting work. Food service managers are usually the first to arrive and the last to leave each day. They ensure the smooth operation of kitchens and dining areas, balancing income with expenses, hiring and firing dishwashers, sous chefs and busboys, tweaking menus for seasonal variation, being everywhere and in everything the establishment does to please its diners. 

Food service managers inspect the incoming food, even if, as you see on food guru shows, the chef has made a pretense of shopping at dawn in bustling open-air markets. You seldom see that same chef open his wallet to pay for 300 pounds of potatoes. That is because the food service manager back at Le Chef Égoïste is getting the invoice, inspecting the potatoes, and paying the bill. 

Food Service & Safety Matters

Food service managers do not work only in school cafeterias and in posh restaurants. They can be found running corporate food delivery programs (whether this means food trucks, cafeterias or executive dining rooms), hospital kitchens, quick service establishments, hotels, franchises, and caterers. 

The duties of food service managers go beyond muffins and money. Yes, they worry over small details such as napkin folding and how fresh the beets are. They dote on the donuts, agonize over the agave, brood over the broccoli, and stew over the . . . stew. Food safety, however, is paramount, because while a cook in the home could accidentally send four or five people scurrying to the bathroom, a cook in a cafeteria could topple four or five hundred diners.

Food service managers must be skilled in overseeing safe food handling, equipment cleanup, and worker safety. They ensure the establishment, from a factory cafeteria serving hurried shift workers to a posh five-star restaurant, complies with health and food safety standards. A health inspection that shuts down a company’s cafeteria is an expensive mistake that could cripple that company’s productivity. 

There’s Always Paperwork

Food service managers may benefit from computers in this digital age, but they still contend with paperwork: 

  • Invoices and orders
  • Staff payroll records
  • Complying with regulations related to licensing, Social Security, unemployment compensation, taxes and wages
  • Contracts with outside vendors, from carting companies to after-hours cleaners to linen services

Handling so many transactions every day makes food service managers equal parts human resource departments, chefs, and accountants. 

Food Service Manager Salary

food service manager salaryFood service managers may not be in their business for the bucks. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tells us that their May, 2012 annual median income was $47,960, which is an excellent salary for a 40-hour week . . . yet no food service manager works only 40 hours, because the demands of the job are so great.

Then again, the rewards of the job are great, too. Providing healthy, tasty food for those millions of school children is personally fulfilling work for food service managers. Pulling off beautiful presentation and plating for hundreds of office workers in a company basement cafeteria, while still catering the board of directors’ five-course luncheon on the 51st floor, is a source of pride. Being a food service manager is as much a calling as it is a career. Who would not want to be a School Lunch Hero, not just May 1, but every day?

Ready to Take on the World? Become a Food Service Manager!

To kindle your passion for food service, contact ECPI University’s Culinary Institute of Virginia to learn more about its 2.5-year program for earning a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Food Service Management. It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!

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