Waiter CV example
A strong waiter CV shows pace on the floor, genuine customer care and numbers: covers per shift, average spend and services closed without a hitch.
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- Sector
- Hospitality and tourism
- Template used
- Lisbon
- ATS level
- ATS verified
- ATS keywords
- 5
Document preview
How the CV looks once laid out
The same example content, laid out in the recommended template: single column, selectable text and no tables or graphics that break automated parsing.
Sample document. Open it in the editor to change template, language and sections without losing the content.
Sarah Bennett
Front-of-house waiter with 5 years in high-volume hospitality
sarah.bennett@mail.com · 07700 900147 · Brighton · linkedin.com/in/sarah
Professional summary
Waiter with five years in high-volume London restaurants. I serve up to 90 covers a shift while keeping service times under 12 minutes and building the kind of rapport that brings guests back. Looking for a settled floor team where I can grow into a section head role.
Experience
Waiter
Employer name · City · 2019 – Present
- Served an average of 90 covers per shift at peak with no logged complaints
- Lifted average spend by 18% through wine and dessert recommendations
- Trained 4 new waiters on floor protocol and the EPOS system
Education
Qualification or certificate for the role
Training centre · Year
Skills
Floor service | EPOS and cashing up | Tray service | Wine list knowledge | Allergens and food safety | Teamwork
Languages
- EnglishNative
- SpanishB1
01
Professional headline
This is the line that decides whether they keep reading: a specific role and years of experience, never an adjective.
Front-of-house waiter with 5 years in high-volume hospitality
02
Example professional summary
Three or four sentences with your specialism, one figure and your goal. It sits right under the headline.
Waiter with five years in high-volume London restaurants. I serve up to 90 covers a shift while keeping service times under 12 minutes and building the kind of rapport that brings guests back. Looking for a settled floor team where I can grow into a section head role.
03
Achievements that work in this role
Past-tense verb, what you did, measurable result. Three to five per role, strongest first.
- 01Served an average of 90 covers per shift at peak with no logged complaints
- 02Lifted average spend by 18% through wine and dessert recommendations
- 03Trained 4 new waiters on floor protocol and the EPOS system
04
Skills to include
Written as plain text: rating bars are invisible to automated filters.
- Floor service
- EPOS and cashing up
- Tray service
- Wine list knowledge
- Allergens and food safety
- Teamwork
05
ATS keywords
The terms filters search for in this role. Place them inside your experience, not in a list at the end.
- covers per shift
- customer service
- EPOS
- allergens
- average spend
Work them naturally into your experience — these are the terms screening software scans for.
06
Tips for this CV
What separates a CV for this trade from a generic one.
- 01
Lead with volume figures: covers, tables or guests per shift — it's the first thing a floor manager looks for.
- 02
Name the EPOS systems you've used; ATS filters often search for that exact word.
- 03
State your shift availability and any food hygiene certificate you hold.
07
What a waiter CV is
Short definition, ready to quote.
A waiter CV is the one or two page document used to apply for a waiter role in hospitality and tourism: it brings together the professional headline, the profile summary, experience with measurable results and the competencies the trade expects you to evidence, such as Floor service and EPOS and cashing up. Unlike a generic CV, it is ordered around what the applicant tracking system and the hiring manager look for in a waiter: the words used in the advert and the numbers of the actual job.
08
Keywords and where to place them
Each term works best in a specific place in the document. Repeating them all at the end scores nothing.
| Keyword | Where to place it |
|---|---|
| covers per shift | In the professional headline |
| customer service | In the profile summary |
| EPOS | Inside an achievement with a figure |
| allergens | In the skills list |
| average spend | In training or certifications |
09
How this waiter CV gets through the filters
What the example above does right, point by point.
- The headline reads «Front-of-house waiter with 5 years in high-volume hospitality»: the job title (waiter) appears literally in the first line, not as a creative synonym.
- The trade's keywords —covers per shift, customer service, EPOS— sit inside the experience and summary, where the filter reads them in context.
- Every achievement carries its figure. «Served an average of 90 covers per shift at peak with no logged complaints» is the pattern to copy: volume, timeframe and result.
- Skills such as Floor service, EPOS and cashing up, Tray service are written as plain text, never as rating bars or stars, which no parser can read.
- The Lisbon template is single-column and rated ATS verified, so the sections come out in order.
10
What hiring managers look for in a waiter
The three points that separate two candidates in this trade.
The covers you have actually handled
A floor manager works out whether you can survive their service before reading anything else. Give the number: covers per shift, how many tables in your section, and whether you also covered the bar or terrace. “120-cover restaurant, six-table section across a double shift” places your level in one line.
Till and cash handling
Name the system (Lightspeed, Zonal, Square, Micros) and mention cashing up: if you reconciled the till and closed the shift, give the average shift take. It is the part of the job with money attached and almost nobody writes it down.
Menu, wine and allergens
Recommending well raises the spend per head, and spotting an allergen avoids a legal problem. Say whether you handled the wine list, upsold specials, and whether you hold Natasha's Law allergen training and a Level 2 Food Safety certificate.
11
Common mistakes on a waiter CV
The ones that repeat in this role, each with its fix.
- 01
Writing “customer service” and stopping there
It is assumed of everyone in the trade, so it separates you from nobody. Replace it with the volume you handled and the outcome: average review score, spend per head, or complaints resolved without escalating to the manager.
- 02
Hiding seasonal work
Summer seasons and agency shifts are normal in hospitality and recruiters know it. Group agency work into one entry (“Banqueting agency shifts, 2023-2025, 40 events”) instead of listing eight two-month contracts that read as instability.
- 03
Listing a language without the real level
In a tourist area the language decides the hire. Don't write “intermediate Spanish”: give the level (B2) and the context, “served international tables in Spanish daily”. It gets tested in the first thirty seconds of the interview.
- 04
Adding a photo
A UK hospitality CV carries no photo, no date of birth and no marital status; agencies strip them out to stay compliant. Use the space for one more achievement instead.
12
What a waiter earns
So you can tell whether an advert is at market rate before applying.
- Usual range
- Typically £11.50-£13.50 an hour, plus service charge where it is shared
- What moves the figure
- London and hotel groups pay at the top of the band, and shift patterns (splits, lates, weekends) change the take-home more than the base rate does.
- Where the figure comes from
- Ranges observed in UK front-of-house adverts through 2026, benchmarked against the National Living Wage.
Frequently asked
Questions about a waiter CV
- Should a waiter CV include a photo in the UK?
- No. UK employers ask agencies to remove photos, dates of birth and personal details to keep hiring compliant, so a photo can get the CV rejected before it is read. Spain is the opposite: there a hospitality CV usually carries one.
- Can I apply with no experience?
- Yes — commis waiter and banqueting agency shifts are entry points. Lead with your Level 2 Food Safety certificate, allergen awareness, availability for evenings and weekends, and any cash-handling role, which is what venues are short of in season.
- One column or two for hospitality?
- One column. Large groups screen through portals that extract the text, and a two-column layout can scramble the reading order. The example on this page uses a single-column template rated ATS verified.
- What if I am moving in from another sector?
- Translate what transfers: tills, serving several people at once, standing shifts and rota flexibility. A retail assistant already proves pace and cash handling — put that in the summary, not buried at the bottom.
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