Is being a restaurant manager stressful?

Being a restaurant manager is a difficult job. It's fast and stressful, and requires a special combination of skills and personality traits (most importantly, staying calm under pressure). Restaurant managers work extremely long hours, sometimes 12 to 15 hours a day, up to seven days a week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During the course of a given day, managers can deal with annoying customers, replace staff, train staff members, and place orders for food and other supplies.

Managers play an important role in ensuring that a restaurant is profitable. Long hours, combined with multiple responsibilities, often cause stress and exhaustion among restaurant managers. As briefly implied above, being a restaurant manager can be extremely stressful. In fact, a study conducted by Cnn Money revealed that 91.9% of restaurant managers said their work is stressful.

Try to get numbers like that from any other field, it wouldn't be easy. There are many reasons why the above statistics are a reality, such as the fierce competition that is the restaurant industry, the high costs of ingredients and the low prices on the menu, and the large number of employees a restaurant must have. It's hard to be a manager when you need to keep up to date with the suggestions and orders of the manager's boss and constantly monitor the staff and update them in various ways that can change throughout the day. With the kind of symbiotic relationship that exists in restaurants, a negative experience somewhere in the chain is enough to throw everything off balance.

In fact, if you run a restaurant that generates significant turnover, you'll often also get a fraction of the profits as a bonus, which can amount to significant amounts of money. Usually, the manager's supervisors or owners order something that is far from in the best interest of the restaurant. Since you'll be responsible for the success of a restaurant and also for the well-being of your employees, you'll have to work long hours to ensure that the processes run smoothly and that you do everything necessary to make your restaurant a long-term success. As a restaurant manager, it's also up to you to manage your employees and this gives you the opportunity to do things the way you want them to be, since not only will you be a normal employee, but you'll have the power to truly influence the success or failure of the restaurant you're responsible for.

With restaurant jobs so closely related to the customer (FOH, BOH, administration, business, and all the others), restaurant management can't afford to have stressed employees on their hands (nor can they afford to feel that stress). That's why restaurant managers must ensure that cleaning schedules and hygiene are in compliance with regulations at all times. For example, many self-taught chefs will encounter a lack of skills when they start working as chefs; therefore, as a restaurant manager, you should focus on chefs who have pursued culinary studies or who can truly demonstrate that they have authentic self-taught skills suitable for a commercial environment. The last common reason for staff inperformance is that restaurants don't provide adequate kitchen equipment, waiter or waiter products, or clear instructions on how to do things.

You should also know that you'll often have to work in the afternoon or even during the night as a restaurant manager, while secretaries and most people can simply relax or sleep during those unpleasant hours. If we add to this all that, due to the unusually long working hours that restaurant managers usually have to do, it is not surprising that they do not want to work as such for a long time, since this will affect both the mental and physical state that will accompany them in their personal lives. . .

Ernest Dargatz
Ernest Dargatz

Freelance food geek. Bacon expert. Certified internet buff. Typical coffee nerd. Avid coffee evangelist.