Server Resume Example (+ Template)

Swap the placeholder venues, numbers and dates for your own. Keep the structure: contact block, summary, experience, skills, education, certifications.

Mid-level server resume (three to five years, full-service)

Mid-level sample — one page, reverse-chronological

MARISOL ORTEGA Austin, TX 78702 | (512) 555-0147 | m.ortega@email.com Open to evenings, weekends and holidays | Reliable transport

SUMMARY Server with five years in full-service restaurants, three of them on the floor of a 140-seat casual-dining room. Runs an 11-table section through 90–120 covers on weekend dinner shifts, trains new hires, and holds current ServSafe Food Handler and TIPS alcohol-server certifications. Comfortable on Toast, Square and Micros terminals and handhelds.

EXPERIENCE

Server — Casual-Dining Restaurant (140 seats), Austin, TX March 2022 – Present - Serve an 11-table section across 90–120 covers on Friday and Saturday dinner shifts, firing courses through Toast so appetizers reach the table within about 8 minutes of ordering. - Describe a 60-item menu and a 40-label wine list from memory, including gluten, dairy and shellfish substitutions, and walk every allergy ticket to the expo line in person. - Check ID for every guest ordering alcohol, refuse service on expired or missing ID, and apply house cut-off policy on busy nights under TIPS guidelines. - Prepare itemized checks, split tabs up to 12 ways for large parties, take card, cash and mobile payments, and close out a drawer with zero variance across 4–5 shifts a week. - Train new servers through a five-shift shadow program; wrote the section's one-page cheat sheet on dessert and after-dinner drink pairings, now used by all 14 servers.

Server — Breakfast and Lunch Café (55 seats), Austin, TX June 2020 – March 2022 - Opened five mornings a week: set 22 tables, brewed six urns of coffee and stocked three side stations before a 7 a.m. door. - Turned a 7-table section three to four times across a six-hour weekend brunch rush, taking orders on a Square handheld at the table. - Ran about 60 checks per shift solo on weekday mornings, including register close-out and the tip-out split with two kitchen staff. - Checked back on every table within two minutes of food delivery and logged repeat guests' usual orders, which regulars asked for by name.

Host and Food Runner — Casual-Dining Restaurant, Austin, TX August 2019 – June 2020 - Seated up to 200 guests per shift on a four-section floor plan, quoting accurate wait times during 45-minute weekend waits. - Managed the waitlist and reservation book on OpenTable and coordinated with servers before double-seating any section. - Ran food for 14 tables at a time, matching seat numbers to tickets and returning incorrect plates to the line before they reached guests.

SKILLS POS and handhelds: Toast, Square, Micros, Aloha | Reservations and waitlist: OpenTable, Resy | Scheduling: 7shifts, HotSchedules Service: section management, course timing, suggestive selling, allergy and dietary handling, tableside wine service, complaint recovery, cash and card handling, side work and opening/closing duties Languages: English and Spanish, fluent in both, spoken and written

EDUCATION High School Diploma — Austin, TX, 2019

CERTIFICATIONS ServSafe Food Handler — current TIPS Alcohol Server Certification — current State alcohol server permit — current (list your state's permit by its exact name)

Entry-level server resume (no serving experience yet)

Entry-level sample — one page, skills and availability up front

DEVON PRICE Columbus, OH 43215 | (614) 555-0182 | devon.price@email.com Available weeknights, weekends and holidays | Age 21+, able to serve alcohol

SUMMARY Food-service worker moving from counter and host work into serving. Two years taking orders and handling payments at volume, ServSafe Food Handler certified, and trained on two POS systems. Looking for a server role in a full-service dining room.

EXPERIENCE

Host — Family Restaurant (90 seats), Columbus, OH May 2024 – Present - Seat 150–180 guests per shift across five server sections, rotating seating so no server takes more than two new tables at once. - Quote and manage waits of up to 40 minutes on weekend evenings, updating guests every 10 minutes. - Bus and reset tables during rushes, turning a four-top in under three minutes. - Answer the phone for takeout orders, enter them on Toast and take card payments at pickup.

Crew Member — Quick-Service Restaurant, Columbus, OH June 2023 – May 2024 - Took and rang up 200+ orders per shift on a touchscreen register during lunch peaks. - Counted and reconciled a cash drawer at close, with no shortages over 11 months. - Followed food safety and holding-temperature checks logged every two hours.

SKILLS POS: Toast, touchscreen register | Order accuracy, cash and card handling, menu memorization, allergen awareness, table resets, upselling add-ons, calm under rush volume

EDUCATION High School Diploma — Columbus, OH, 2023

CERTIFICATIONS ServSafe Food Handler — current Alcohol server training — enrolled, completing this month

Work top to bottom. The whole thing fits on one page at this level.

1. Header. Name, city and state, phone, email. Nothing else is required — no street address, no photo, no date of birth. Two lines that do earn their space in restaurant hiring: your availability ("Open to evenings, weekends and holidays") and, if you're old enough to serve alcohol in your state, a short note saying so. Managers filter on both. Use a professional email address; if your current one is a joke from high school, make a new one in five minutes.

1. Summary. Three or four lines, no objective statement, no "seeking a challenging position." Use this formula:

[Years] years serving in [type of venue] + [scope: section size, covers, seats] + [one or two strengths: POS, wine, allergens, training, second language] + [certifications].

Example — mid-level, casual dining

Server with five years in full-service restaurants, three of them on an 11-table section in a 140-seat dining room running 90–120 covers a weekend shift. Trains new hires, knows a 40-label wine list cold, and holds current ServSafe Food Handler and TIPS certifications.

Example — entry-level, moving up from host

Host and former quick-service crew member moving into serving. Two years taking orders and handling payments at 200-order lunch volume, ServSafe Food Handler certified, trained on Toast, and available nights, weekends and holidays.

1. Experience. Reverse-chronological: job title, venue type and seat count, city and state, month and year range. If you'd rather not name a former employer, describe it ("Independent Italian Restaurant, 110 seats"). List three to five bullets per job, more for the most recent one. Use this bullet formula:

Action verb + the task + scope in covers, tables, checks, menu items, shifts or guests (+ the result, if you have one).

The core tasks ONET lists for waiters and waitresses give you the raw material: taking and transmitting orders to the kitchen, checking ID before serving alcohol, preparing itemized checks, handling payments, and checking back on customer satisfaction (ONET OnLine, undated). Each of those becomes a bullet once you attach a number.

Example bullets you can adapt: - Served a 10-table section through 80–100 covers per dinner shift, coursing tickets so entrées followed appetizers within 12 minutes. - Memorized a 55-item menu plus six rotating specials daily and answered allergen questions on every dish without checking a binder. - Entered orders on Toast handhelds at the table, cutting ticket times and reducing kitchen reprints to fewer than two per shift. - Checked ID on every alcohol order and refused service in line with house policy, including on 200-guest holiday nights. - Prepared itemized checks and split tabs for parties up to 16, processing card, cash, gift card and mobile payments without drawer variance. - Checked back on each table within two minutes of food delivery and corrected 3–5 order issues per shift before guests had to ask twice. - Upsold appetizers, wine by the glass and desserts, adding items to roughly half the checks in my section on weekend shifts. - Trained seven new servers across five-shift onboarding rotations and certified three of them to run a full section alone. - Set and broke down a 20-table patio for seasonal service, completing opening side work before an 11 a.m. door five days a week. - Handled complaints tableside — wrong fires, long waits, temperature issues — and escalated to the manager only twice in a year.

Pull your numbers from your POS reports, your section assignment, the seat count of the room and the size of the menu. If you genuinely don't know a figure, estimate the one you can defend in an interview and say "about."

1. Skills. A compact block, not a long column of single words. Group it: POS and reservation software first, then service skills, then languages. Name the systems you've actually touched — Toast, Square, Micros, Aloha, OpenTable, Resy, 7shifts, HotSchedules. Point-of-sale software is listed as a relevant technology skill for this occupation (O*NET OnLine, undated), and it is the first thing a manager checks, because it decides how many shifts of training you'll need. If you speak a second language used by your guests or your kitchen, say which and at what level.

1. Education. Usually two lines or fewer. List the highest level you've completed, the city and state, and the year. ONET classifies waiters and waitresses in the job zone for occupations needing little or no preparation, and publishes a survey of what employers say they want from new hires in this occupation (ONET OnLine, undated) — worth reading before you worry that your education section is thin. If you're a student, list your school and expected graduation; if you've done hospitality or culinary coursework, add it as a single line. Drop high school once you have a degree.

6. Licences and certifications. Give this its own heading near the bottom; managers scan for it. Include: - Food handler certification. ServSafe is a food and beverage safety training and certification program (Restaurant365, undated) and is the name most managers recognise. Some states and counties require a food handler card of their own — check your local health department. - Alcohol server training. TIPS is an alcohol training course that is sometimes required for servers, bartenders or managers who serve or sell alcohol (360training, undated). Requirements differ by state and sometimes by county: in some places it's mandatory before your first shift, in others it's voluntary but your employer insists. Check your state's alcoholic beverage control agency for what's accepted where you live. - State permits or cards by their exact legal name, with expiry dates if they have them. - CPR or first aid, if current.

If you're still working on a certification, write "enrolled, completing [month]" rather than leaving it off. There is also a registered apprenticeship title for this occupation (O*NET OnLine, undated); if you've completed one, list it here with the sponsor and the year.

The difference is almost always a number, and the number is almost always one you already know: how many tables were in your section, how many covers you did, how big the menu was, how many people you trained.

Pick the ones you can back up in a bullet or an interview. ONET ranks service orientation, active listening and speaking among the essential skills for waiters and waitresses, with oral comprehension and expression among the key abilities and customer and personal service among the top knowledge areas (ONET OnLine, undated) — so the soft skills here are not filler, they are the job.

Server pay is rarely a single number, which is why you should never put one on your resume. It usually comes in two or three parts: a base hourly wage, tips, and sometimes a share of a tip pool or a service charge. How those parts fit together depends heavily on where you work. Some states allow employers to pay tipped workers a lower base wage and count tips toward the minimum; other states require the full state minimum before tips. That single difference can change what a shift is worth more than the restaurant itself does, so check the rules for your own state rather than assuming what you heard elsewhere applies.

Within a state, what moves your earnings is mostly volume and check average. A busy weekend dinner shift in a high-check-average dining room is worth more than a slow weekday lunch in the same building. Section size, how many times your tables turn, whether you're scheduled on the patio or the back room, whether the house pools tips or lets you keep your own, and how much you tip out to bartenders, bussers and food runners all feed into the number on your paycheck. Banquets and large parties often carry an automatic service charge with its own split. Seasonality matters too: resort towns, campus towns and holiday-heavy calendars swing hard.

For current, location-specific figures, use the official sources rather than job-board averages. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the job outlook for waiters and waitresses in its Occupational Outlook Handbook (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, undated). ONET OnLine carries the same occupation's wage, employment level and projected growth and openings data, sourced from BLS (ONET OnLine, 2025). CareerOneStop, from the U.S. Department of Labor, has an occupation profile for this role where you can look up wages and outlook by state or metro area and search certification requirements near you (CareerOneStop, undated).

Two practical notes for the resume itself. First, don't list a desired wage — leave money for the conversation, after you know the shift mix and the tip-out structure. Second, do list availability, because in this occupation availability is close to a qualification: the shifts that pay are the ones most people don't want, and saying you'll take weekends and holidays puts you ahead of the applicant who won't.

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