Top 8 Restaurant Manager Interview Questions Answered!

Learn how to answer the toughest restaurant manager interview questions and start applying for your next restaurant manager job today!
restaurant manager interview questions

Restaurant Manager interview questions can be tough and tricky due to the complexity of their role. Restaurant Managers supervises a restaurant location and its daily operations. Their responsibilities include recruiting and training staff, scheduling rosters for employees and ensuring compliance with company protocols. Besides that, they also prepare menus, order food & beverage materials, monitor expenses and settle disputes between customer

They liaise between restaurant employees and the headquarters of the company. Restaurant Managers file reports, meet turnover goals and offer advice about how to run the company more efficiently based on their working experience in the restaurant.

Let’s have a look at the top 8 interview restaurant manager interview questions.

1.What do you know about our restaurant?

If you have done your homework before the interview, you already know how to answer this. Check out their website, take a look at their social media channels, guest reviews on Facebook and Google, the number of waitresses working in the restaurant, what cuisine do they serve (specialty or seasonal), what vibes are they portraying and how is the atmosphere like, what are their strengths and weaknesses, how customers feel about their restaurant, etc. This information will help you with this question.

2. What experience do you have in this field?

Hopefully, if you are applying for this role, you would already have similar working experience, and if that is the case, you will share all of the relevant experiences that you had. But if you don’t have any experience, this is when you have to be honest and tell the hiring manager that although you don’t have experience working as a restaurant manager, you have got people skills. And people skills are one of the many qualities that you need in managing a team, that will also relate to internal management roles

3. How do you cope with an understaffed shift?

One of your responsibilities is to schedule employees for different shifts. As such, you’ll definitely encounter a case where one or more workers can’t work due to lack of manpower. When this happens, the first thing you’d do is inform your employees to see if anyone of them would be able to cover the shift that day. Alternatively, you will take it upon yourself to accomplish the role of the missing employee. Since you already know this will happen, you can suggest implementing a reward system for employees who hit perfect attendance on a monthly basis.

4. What would you do if an employee is not performing up to your expectations?

Occasionally, employees don’t meet company expectations based on their working performance. There are many explanations for this and it will be your duty to get to the bottom of it, find out the problem and fix the solution. Below is an example of how you can answer.

“I’ll find out why my employee is not meeting company’s expectations. Is it because they’re stressed out at home, family issues, etc. Then, I’ll listen to their reason and suggest a way to help. However, if the poor performance continues, I will follow up with disciplinary protocols such as warning letters or termination. I will take pride to help the employee, but at the same time I’ll also be authoritative when needed.”

5. Elaborate a time when you dealt with a serious customer complaint.

Creating quality food is the aim of all restaurants and it is very important to be able to manage customer problems before they escalate. The hiring manager may provide you with a scenario; imagine when a customer has found a hair in his or her meal. What is your next course of action? Below is one way you can answer.

“I’ll apologise to the customer and have their meal replaced. I would offer to either compensate the customer’s meal or give them a discount off their total bill and ensure this incident will not happen again.”

6. Why do you want to become our restaurant manager?

Compliment the hiring manager’s company by saying that you like their restaurant because they are one of the highest traffic restaurants in town. You can see certain opportunities to change, and believe that you can make their restaurant a better place, for both employees and customers.

This is one of the most crucial parts of your interview- if you manage to persuade them that you genuinely care about their well-being and success, your odds of being hired will automatically increase

7. What would you improve about our restaurant?

Your pre-interview research will provide you a clear response on this question. If you can’t identify any room for improvement, you can still say you would strive to boost employee’s job quality, increase the level of customer satisfaction, or attract more new customers into the restaurant via online social media marketing.

8. How would you motivate other workers in our restaurant?

You can say that you will set a conducive working environment for our employees and restaurant. Happy employees equal to happy customers. Showing employees ways to achieve their individual goals (salary increment, bigger tips and job promotion) and the restaurant’s goals (better online reviews, more traffic, more returning customers, etc), so that employees understand how their effort and work will translate into their lives.

By answering these restaurant manager interview questions with confidence, you will be able to show to your hiring managers that you have what it takes to be make the restaurant a success. Check out our restaurant manager jobs and start applying today!

Brian Tessier

Director of Business Development and Marketing at GrabJobs. Brian can usually be found reading a book, and that book will more likely be about startups and personal development. When not absorbed in the latest best-selling page-turner, Brian loves writing and biking. Read more: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-tessier/