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Contents
What Matters Most
Why This Catering Manager Resume Works
How to Write a Catering Manager Resume
What to Include in a Catering Manager Resume
Catering Manager Resume Summary Examples
Catering Manager Work Experience Examples
Top Catering Manager Skills
Key Certifications & Licences for a Catering Manager
Common Catering Manager Resume Mistakes
Catering Manager Resume FAQs
Summary
Catering manager with fifteen years in catering and hospitality, the last six running catering operations for a company in London. Owns the catering business — managing teams, menus, budgets and clients, and delivering great food and service profitably across events and contracts. Grew the catering operation's revenue and margins while lifting client satisfaction. Leads kitchen and front-of-house teams, manages budgets, suppliers and food cost, plans menus, ensures food safety, and wins and keeps clients. Strong on both the operational and financial management and the people leadership catering demands. Organised, commercial and calm under event pressure. Looking for a catering-manager or hospitality-operations role with a company that wants its catering run well and profitably.
Professional Experience
Catering Manager
London Catering Company, London, UK
Apr 2017 – Present
- Run catering operations across teams, menus, budgets and clients as the catering manager.
- Grew the catering operation's revenue and margins while lifting client-satisfaction scores across contracts.
- Lead kitchen and front-of-house teams to deliver great food and service at every event.
- Manage budgets, suppliers and food cost carefully to protect margin without cutting quality.
- Plan menus and ensure food safety and quality across events and contracts, meeting every client's specific requirements.
- Win and keep clients across events and contracts through reliable, high-quality delivery and consistently attentive customer service.
Assistant Catering Manager / Head Chef
City Hospitality Group, London, UK
Aug 2006 – Mar 2017
- Led kitchen teams and supported catering operations and events as a head chef and assistant manager.
- Managed food cost, menus, staff and service quality across a busy catering operation.
- Learned catering operations, budgets and team leadership on the job over years across a busy hospitality business.
- Gained the catering certification and progressed into a full catering-manager role overseeing events and ongoing client contracts.
Education
BA (Hons) Hospitality Management, Hospitality Management
University of West London
Sep 2003 – Jun 2006
- Hospitality management degree covering catering, operations, finance and service, with a placement. The placement led directly into catering. Built the foundation behind running a catering operation.
Food Safety & Catering Operations Certification, Catering
Institute of Hospitality
Jan 2012 – Jun 2012
- Certification in food safety and catering operations covering hygiene, cost control and management. It professionalised the management side of the role. Applied directly to running catering operations profitably and safely.
Highlights
Grew revenue and margin
- Grew the catering operation's revenue and margins while lifting client satisfaction. Growing the business and keeping clients happy together is the mark of catering run well.
Leads food and service
- Leads kitchen and front-of-house teams to deliver great food and service every time. Strong leadership across both is what makes catering operations succeed.
Certifications
Food Safety & Catering Operations
Institute of Hospitality
Jun 2012 – Present
- Certification in food safety and catering operations covering hygiene, cost control and management. It professionalised the management side of the role. Applied directly to running catering operations profitably and safely.
Catering Contract Turnaround
Catering Contract Turnaround
Jan 2019 – Dec 2019
- Took over an underperforming catering contract, reworking menus, food cost and the team, which grew revenue and margin while raising client satisfaction and securing the contract's renewal.
Languages
- English (UK) — Native or Bilingual Proficiency
- French — Limited Working Proficiency
Technical Skills
- Catering Operations
- Team Leadership
- Menu Planning
- Budget & Food Cost
- Supplier Management
- Food Safety
- Client Management
- Event Delivery
- Service Standards
- Planning
Personal Skills
- Organisation
- Leadership
- Commercial Awareness
- Composure
- Communication
Activities & Interests
- Gym
- Tennis
- Holidays
- Wine Tasting
- Radio
What Matters Most
Before the detail, here is what separates a catering manager's resume from a restaurant manager's:
- Lead with cost per head and gross profit percentage. Catering is judged on margin per function, not on covers served.
- Name the catering you actually run: staff dining and business contracts, conference and banqueting, weddings and private events, or education and healthcare. Caterers hire by category.
- Food safety is a hiring gate, not a nice-to-have. State the level of your food safety qualification, who awarded it, and the hygiene rating you held.
- Quantify what you controlled: covers per function, peak casual headcount briefed, annual contract value, and food cost as a percentage of sales.
- Client retention outranks client wins. Contract renewals and retenders held are the numbers a catering operator reads first.
- Show you can staff a floor you do not fully control. Rota building, agency booking and briefing a team you have never met are daily catering problems.
Why This Catering Manager Resume Works
This sample runs event work and ongoing client contracts side by side, which is the harder version of the job. Look at how it is built, not only at what it claims:
- The summary fixes scope in its first line, fifteen years in catering with the last six running an operation, so a reader places the candidate's level before reaching a single bullet.
- Revenue growth and margin are paired with client satisfaction in the same claim. A caterer reading that sees someone who did not buy growth by discounting or protect margin by dropping quality.
- Kitchen and front-of-house leadership are called out separately. That is the signal for contract catering rather than a chef role, and most applicants only evidence one side of the pass.
- The Catering Contract Turnaround entry works as a case study: an underperforming contract, the levers pulled on menus, food cost and the team, then the renewal. That structure survives any future rewrite.
- Food safety appears in both education and certifications rather than being buried among skills, which is where a hiring caterer expects to find it.
- The tagline commits to the commercial half of the job. Plenty of catering resumes talk about food and never mention profit.
How to Write a Catering Manager Resume
Catering hiring managers read for two things: whether you can hold a margin, and whether you can be trusted with food safety. Build every section around those.
Say what kind of catering you run, in the first line
Open by naming the category and the scale. Contract catering for business and industry, event and banqueting, wedding and private, or education and healthcare are effectively four different jobs with four different hiring pools. "Catering manager running two business and industry contracts serving 1,400 covers a day" tells a reader more in one line than a paragraph of duties.
Put cost per head and gross profit into the bullets
Menu planning without a price attached is invisible. Write the cost you built to and the margin you held: "Rebuilt the six-week cycle to a 3.10 pound cost per head, holding gross profit at 68 percent through a year of ingredient inflation." That single construction does more work than five lines about creativity and seasonality.
{TIP}
Evidence food safety the way an auditor would
Name the qualification level and awarding body, then show it in operation. Whether you wrote the HACCP plan, who owned the due diligence file, how many unannounced environmental health visits you passed and at what rating. An allergen matrix and a Natasha's Law labelling process on the page are worth more than the word compliance used three times.
Show your staffing model, because it changes the job
Running a salaried brigade is not the same as building a 45-person casual bank for a Saturday wedding. State which you did, how you covered peaks, what your agency spend or no-show rate looked like, and how you briefed people who had never worked your service before. Catering interviewers ask this early, so answer it on the page.
Turn client relationships into retained revenue
Caterers live and die on renewals. Give the contract value you held at retender, the percentage of event clients who came back, the mobilisation you delivered on time. "Retained 94 percent of contract value across two bid cycles" is a hiring argument; excellent client relationships is not.
Match your numbers to the contract model
Cost-plus and fixed-price contracts reward different behaviour, and a catering operator will notice if you cannot tell them apart. If you ran a fixed-price site you carried the risk, so lead with food cost and labour percentage. On cost-plus, lead with client satisfaction, participation and budget accuracy instead.
What to Include in a Catering Manager Resume
Beyond the standard sections, catering resumes carry a few blocks that hospitality generalists leave out and that operators specifically look for.
A short contract or venue portfolio: site type, covers per day or per event, annual value, and how long you held it. Three lines here beat a paragraph of description.
Food safety credentials with their level and awarding body, plus your most recent hygiene rating or client audit score.
The systems you work in, whether that is Fourth Hospitality, Kitchen CUT, Nutritics, Caterease or a hotel sales and catering platform. Most applicants list none, so naming yours is free differentiation.
Event scale evidence: largest single function by covers, number of events delivered per year, and the biggest team you briefed at once.
A personal licence if you hold one, since alcohol at events is often the reason a caterer needs one on the team.
Languages, which matter more in catering than in most operations roles because kitchen and casual teams are frequently multilingual.
Catering Manager Resume Summary Examples
Three summaries at different levels and in different corners of catering, written to sit beside the sample rather than repeat it. Notice how each one commits to a category in its opening clause:
Entry-level resume summary example
Assistant catering manager with four years in contract catering, promoted from front-of-house supervisor to running daily service in a 600-cover staff restaurant. Holds a Level 3 Award in Supervising Food Safety in Catering and owns the site's temperature logs, allergen matrix and weekly stock count. Cut food waste 18 percent in a single trading year by tightening production sheets against actual counter sales, and held a five-star hygiene rating through two unannounced inspections. Comfortable briefing casual teams for evening hospitality on top of the standing contract, and used to costing a function sheet without supervision. Looking for a first full catering manager post with an operator that promotes from the floor rather than hiring in.
Mid-level resume summary example
Catering manager with nine years in event and wedding catering, currently delivering around 170 functions a year from 40 to 900 covers across marquee, dry-hire and hotel venues. Costs packages between 48 and 62 pounds per head and has held gross profit at 66 percent through three seasons of ingredient inflation. Built a retained bank of 60 casual staff that cut agency reliance and dropped event no-shows below 4 percent. Runs allergen control personally on every function sheet, with no reportable incident in four years of trading. Converted eleven one-off clients into annual retainers by following each event with a costed proposal inside a week. Seeking a senior events role with a caterer that competes on food rather than on price.
Senior-level resume summary example
Catering operations manager with seventeen years in contract catering, the last five holding a portfolio of eleven business and industry sites turning over 8.4 million pounds a year. Owns the regional P&L, the mobilisation of new contracts and the retender process, having retained 94 percent of contract value across two bid cycles. Rebuilt the regional menu framework around a fixed cost per head, taking 3.2 points out of food cost while raising client satisfaction on every site scored quarterly. Develops unit catering managers, four of whom now run their own multi-site patches. Chairs the food safety governance meeting and holds a Level 4 Award in Managing Food Safety in Catering. Looking for a head of catering operations role with an operator serious about retention.
Catering Manager Work Experience Examples
Bullets from three corners of catering, each written the way a hiring operator wants to read them: context, a number, and what that number did to the contract.
Contract catering, business and industry
- Ran daily catering for a 1,200-seat staff restaurant on a fixed-price contract, holding food cost at 28 percent of sales while lifting participation from 41 to 58 percent across two full trading years.
- Rebuilt the six-week menu cycle around a 3.10 pound cost per head, cutting waste 22 percent and adding 4.5 points of gross profit without removing the hot deli counter that client surveys rated highest.
- Mobilised a new 400-cover contract in nine weeks, recruiting fourteen staff, writing the HACCP plan from scratch and passing the client's pre-opening audit with no critical findings at first inspection.
- Held a five-star Food Hygiene Rating across three consecutive unannounced environmental health visits by running weekly temperature audits and a monthly due diligence file review with the head chef.
- Renegotiated the nominated supplier list at contract renewal, consolidating 60 percent of dry goods with one distributor and taking 9,000 pounds a year out of delivery, shortfall and credit-note handling.
Event, wedding and banqueting catering
- Delivered 180 events a year ranging from 40 to 900 covers, owning function sheets, staffing plans and kitchen timings so every service landed within ten minutes of the client's agreed running order.
- Costed wedding and corporate packages between 48 and 62 pounds per head, protecting 68 percent gross profit while holding pricing against competitors on the four packages clients compared most often.
- Briefed and ran mixed teams of up to 45 casual and agency staff per event, cutting no-shows from 12 to 3 percent by building a retained bank of regulars paid within seven days of the function.
- Managed allergen control on events carrying up to 30 special diets, running a written allergen matrix and a separated service line that produced zero reportable incidents across four trading seasons.
- Converted eleven one-off event clients into annual contracts worth 240,000 pounds by following every function with a costed proposal issued inside five working days of the client debrief.
Education and healthcare catering
- Ran catering across four school sites serving 2,600 meals a day, meeting School Food Standards on every menu cycle while holding free-school-meal uptake above the local authority average all year.
- Cut agency spend 34 percent on a hospital catering contract by building a flexible bank rota and cross-training ward hosts to cover both meal rounds and the retail coffee outlet at peak hours.
- Delivered texture-modified meals at IDDSI levels 4 to 6 for 90 patients daily, training eighteen staff on the framework and passing the trust's nutrition audit with a full compliance score.
- Introduced Nutritics recipe analysis across 40 dishes so allergen and nutrition data printed directly onto ward menus, removing the manual labelling step that had caused three documented near misses.
Top Catering Manager Skills
Catering sits across a kitchen, a floor and a spreadsheet, so the list has to prove all three. Pick the ones you can defend with a number in the interview:
Hard skills
- Menu planning and menu engineering
- Cost per head costing
- Gross profit and food cost control
- HACCP plan ownership
- Allergen management and Natasha's Law labelling
- Food Hygiene Rating and environmental health readiness
- Function sheets and banqueting event orders
- Rota building and labour percentage control
- Casual bank and agency staffing
- Supplier negotiation and nominated lists
- Stock counts and wastage control
- Contract mobilisation
- Retender and bid support
- Client account management
- Event logistics and service timings
- Fourth Hospitality and Kitchen CUT
- Nutritics recipe and nutrition analysis
- EPOS reporting and participation tracking
- COSHH, manual handling and kitchen health and safety
- Licensed bar and cellar operation
Soft skills:
- Composure during service
- Clear briefing
- Commercial judgement
- Client diplomacy
- Delegation
- Planning under deadline
Key Certifications & Licences for a Catering Manager
Food safety qualifications are close to mandatory in catering management, and the level you hold tells a reader how much of the safety management system you are trusted with:
-
Level 3 Award in Supervising Food Safety in Catering
— Highfield Qualifications The working standard for anyone supervising a kitchen. Treat it as the minimum a UK catering employer expects to see, not a differentiator.
-
Level 4 Award in Managing Food Safety in Catering
— Highfield Qualifications Marks you as the person who owns the food safety management system across a site or a portfolio. Worth placing prominently if you hold it.
-
Level 3 Award in HACCP for Food Manufacturing
— Royal Society for Public Health Optional, but persuasive when you have written HACCP plans for contract mobilisations rather than inherited them from a predecessor.
-
Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders
— BIIAB Required to sell alcohol under a premises licence. Event and wedding caterers are asked for this far more often than contract caterers are.
-
ServSafe Food Protection Manager
— National Restaurant Association The United States equivalent. Include it when applying to American operators or to international contract caterers with sites in the US.
-
IOSH Managing Safely
— IOSH Useful in event catering, where marquee builds, gas and temporary kitchens put health and safety squarely on the catering manager's desk.
Common Catering Manager Resume Mistakes
Every one of these turns up in real catering applications, and each quietly costs interviews.
Moving out of a single restaurant kitchen into contract or event catering is harder to write than it looks, because the achievements have to be recast entirely. Working with a professional resume writing service pays off when the transferable half of your experience is the half you find hardest to describe.
- Writing it as a restaurant manager resume. Covers, table turns and tips tell a caterer nothing about whether you can cost a function or mobilise a contract.
- Listing menu planning with no price attached. Everyone in catering plans menus; the hire is about planning them to a cost per head.
- Burying the food safety qualification in the education section. Put the level and awarding body where a reader finds it on the first pass.
- Naming events instead of describing them. The Henderson wedding means nothing to a stranger; 380 covers across three service points on a six-hour build means everything.
- Leaving the staffing model out. Salaried brigade, casual bank or agency changes the job completely, and it will be the second question in the interview.
- Claiming revenue growth without the margin beside it. Sales up while gross profit fell is a story caterers have been burned by, so give both numbers together.
- Treating allergens as a compliance line. Since Natasha's Law, how you handle allergen information is a hiring topic in its own right.
Catering Manager Resume FAQs
The questions candidates actually search before writing a catering management application:
Put the category and scale of catering you run, your food cost and gross profit numbers, your food safety qualification level, and the contract or event volume you held. A catering employer is checking that you can protect a margin and pass an inspection, in that order. Duties without numbers read as a job description rather than a track record.
The core set is menu costing to a price per head, gross profit and food cost control, HACCP and allergen management, rota building and labour percentage, supplier negotiation, and client account management. Add the systems you genuinely use, such as Fourth Hospitality, Kitchen CUT or Nutritics, because very few applicants name any at all.
In practice yes. UK employers expect at least a Level 3 Award in Supervising Food Safety in Catering, and a Level 4 if you own the food safety management system for a site or group of sites. It works as a screening filter, so give the level and awarding body rather than writing food safety trained.
A catering manager resume is organised around contracts, events and cost per head; a restaurant manager resume is organised around one site's covers, service and sales. Catering employers want mobilisation, function delivery, client retention and margin per job. If your bullets only describe a single venue's trading day, you are applying as a restaurant manager.
Describe it by scale and outcome: covers delivered, cost per head, gross profit held, contract value retained, team size briefed. Group similar functions rather than listing every event, then give one worked example in full detail. A reader wants to know the size of operation you can be trusted with.
Two pages for anyone past five years in catering, one page below that. Catering careers accumulate a lot of venues and contracts, so compress older roles into a single line each and give the detail to your last two positions. Three pages signals that you have not decided what matters.
Ten to fifteen years of detail is plenty, with earlier chef or front-of-house roles compressed into a short early-career line. Kitchen experience before management is genuinely useful in catering, so keep it visible, but do not let a section chef role from twenty years ago crowd out the contracts you run now.
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