Restaurant Management interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your CV.
2. Walk me through your most impressive restaurant, service, or operating turnaround.
3. Tell me about a weakness, a failure, or feedback you've received and worked on.
4. Why restaurants — and why independent specifically?
5. Why the sector — what's your point of view on this concept and this dining occasion?
6. Why the firm?
7. When a guest is choosing between the firm and a top competitor for a Saturday-night dinner, what's the reason she ends up booking the firm?
8. If you had a P&L, the reservations book, and the recent review feed for the firm, walk me through how you'd diagnose restaurant health in the first 90 days.

Technical concepts to master

• Prime cost command — the restaurant general manager's operating lens

  Prime cost definition and target · Food cost lever stack · Labour cost lever stack · Comp / void as a margin signal

• Beverage program economics — the general manager's highest-margin lever

  Pour cost and beverage attach · Wine list design and inventory turn · Cocktail program economics and craft cost · Service-charge vs. tip migration

• Front-of-house service standards — the hospitality craft

  Pre-shift, the push, and the close · Service-recovery posture (the Danny Meyer / Will Guidara model) · Reservations and the table-management craft · Regular guests and the repeat-visit flywheel

• People, bench, and turnover — the long-cycle craft of restaurant leadership

  FOH and BOH voluntary turnover · FOH bench and the captain / AGM ladder · Chef-owner / general managerpartnership · Food safety and incident discipline

Practical drills

• Your restaurant does $5M in annual sales. Last month's P&L: food cost 33% of food sales, beverage cost 25% of beverage sales, labour 33% of total sales. Beverage is 30% of total sales. What's prime cost, where would you focus first, and what's the 90-day recovery if you target a 200-bps prime cost improvement?
• Your chef-owner has asked you to lead the monthly menu engineering session. Last month's mix data shows: total food sales $250K; top quartile dishes by margin contribute $115K (46%); bottom quartile $35K (14%). Two appetisers are running 42% food cost (vs. 30% target); one entree (a signature dish) is running 38%; the dessert program is at 22% and well-attached. Walk me through the session.
• It's 7:45pm on a Saturday. You have 175 covers on the book, 60 in the dining room, 30 more on the way for an 8pm seating. Your sous chef has just walked off the line after an argument with the chef de cuisine; the chef-owner is off tonight. The 8pm seating includes a four-top for a regular guest celebrating their parents' 50th anniversary. The bar is two-deep waiting for tables. Walk me through the next 90 minutes.

Smart-question anchors

• Chef-owner / partner relationship and operating cadence — how the general manager and the chef-owner align on menu, labour, comp, and the night's read at {firm_name}
• Prime cost discipline and the four-wall — the {firm_name}'s current prime cost band, the gating four-wall KPI, and the general manager's authority on menu pricing and labour decisions
• Beverage program direction — wine list cycling, cocktail program emphasis, beverage attach trajectory, and the beverage director / sommelier relationship
• Service standards and the hospitality posture — the {firm_name}'s service model, signature-moment programme, regular-guest CRM, and the inheritance from the Setting the Table / Unreasonable Hospitality canon
• FOH and BOH bench development — captain / AGM ladder, sommelier bench, sous chef pipeline, and the {firm_name}'s internal-promotion record

Sourced from

National Restaurant Association (NRA) — restaurant industry operations report · Toast and Restaurant365 industry benchmark reports · Restaurant Business, Nation's Restaurant News, and Eater trade press · Danny Meyer Setting the Table and Will Guidara Unreasonable Hospitality · Reddit r/KitchenConfidential, r/restaurateur, Glassdoor restaurant general manager threads · Cornell Centre for Hospitality Research — restaurant operations publications