Home >> Career Center >> Restaurant Manager >> College Prerequisites for a Career as a Restaurant Manager
There are many different options for culinary school, depending on what kind of career path you want to follow, where you want to take classes, where see yourself working and how long you see yourself spending in school. One of the more potentially lucrative and challenging culinary career options is training to become a restaurant manager.
A Career in Culinary Management
The manager of a restaurant plays a very important role – ensuring that the business is running smoothly and profitably, that the food is up to the highest standards, the customers are satisfied and the staff is happy. This job involves a lot of managerial duties, such as keeping track of inventory, maintaining equipment, writing staff schedules and placing product orders. It also requires a great deal of knowledge of and appreciation for food, and a solid understanding of how a successful restaurant should run. And like many careers in the culinary industry, you will be much better off with a high level of education and training if you want to move into one of these coveted positions.
Culinary School Requirements for Managers
Before you can think about pursuing a career in culinary management, you will need to get a certain level of education. Some restaurant managers never receive any more formal education after high school, and work their way up from an entry-level position in a restaurant. This is very challenging, though, and no number of years spent working in any restaurant will guarantee a management position without any education to go along with that experience. A bachelor’s degree in business management simply provides graduates with better job opportunities. There are even bachelor’s degrees in hospitality management that are focused specifically on training for management positions in restaurants or similar service industry businesses.
In addition to bachelor’s degree programs, which take approximately four years to complete, there are also two-year associate’s degree programs in restaurant administration and restaurant management. Many schools offer certificate programs as well, which take less than a year to complete and are very appropriate for professionals already working in the culinary industry who want to move into restaurant management positions. The culinary school requirements will vary from one program to the next, but you can always expect to receive a combination of classroom instruction and plenty of hands-on experience.
What You Won’t Learn in Cooking School
If you’re going to be a successful manager in a restaurant or other culinary establishment, you will need a few skills that they don’t necessarily teach in school. You will need to be able to work well with a variety of other people in a leadership position, showing initiative as well as restraint during even the most stressful situations. You will need to be organized, reliable and physically fit, since you’ll be working long hours on your feet. And perhaps most importantly, you need to care about food.
