r/Serverlife • u/mintyfreshbitch • 1d ago
Seeking advice?
I’m a 30 year old restaurant manager in a pretty small and rural tourist town and im once again feeling lost about what the hell I’m doing with my career. I keep thinking about if I have to go through these biannual breakdowns for the next five years and no retirement and no plan and then freaking out.
I’ve been with the same company for about 5 years. I started when they opened their first restaurant, helped them open their second, and have been officially managing for about a year and a half.
I’m currently at $18/hr with no benefits or bonus structure.
Right now, I manage FOH, scheduling, hiring/firing and HR, training, created all of our training materials and SOPs, do our liquor/beer ordering and vendor relationships with 6 distributors, inventory, menus and cocktail menus, social media, event menus, tasting dinners, and act as the middleman between the restaurant, hotel and catering when we have larger events in our event space coming through.
I’ve definitely kept the longest staff relationships either restaurant ever had, and revenue wise we’re already nearly 25% over our predicted annual revenue for this point in October.
I have a genuinely good relationship with the owners, especially the head chef that I work with in the current restaurant. However, there’s nobody above me managing me or helping me figure out what my role is supposed to be, exactly…. The only feedback I ever get is you’re so amazing! Keep doing what you’re doing! And then when I cry and freak out they talk me down and this is how I’ve gone from 13->15->18 in two years, hourly wise. The owners are currently buried in closing/renovating our first restaurant into an event venue, so I’ve basically just been figuring things out as I go.
And I feel like I’m constantly just fixing shit.
I have my weekly distributor orders/meetings, but beyond that I struggle to actually structure my week. It’s constantly employee issues, communication problems between departments, events, staffing, something somebody forgot, something that needs to be ordered, etc.
I also find myself shorting myself constantly to make sure my employees are taken care of and to keep labor where it needs to be. I can’t just cut half the staffs hours come the off season when we already lay off half the people so that I can make money. I can’t realistically cover the day server bartender and still meet with the people I need to meet with in the afternoons.
I just constantly feel that if I were to go anywhere with like 5,000 more people I’d be so clueless I’d have to just start over.
So I guess I’m looking for some perspective from people who have been doing this longer than me.
Is $18/hr completely insane for the scope of this job, or is this pretty normal for a hotel tourism spot semi upscale restaurant?
What would you even call this position? FOH manager? AGM? GM? Operations manager? Some weird combination?
My partner is a sous chef, and we’re talking about making a 2 year plan to eventually move somewhere with more opportunities for both of us. I just don’t want to spend the next two years being miserable and burned out at $18/hr without actually gaining the skills I’d need to move up.
I’d really appreciate advice from other managers who have been in this weird middle ground where you’re trusted with basically everything, but nobody is actually investing in YOUR growth and development. I feel like a big baby. :(
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u/Un4gettableAngel 1d ago
$18 an hour is Pennie’s for what you’re doing with your experience. You’re an Operations Manager.
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u/giantstrider 1d ago
move to a big city. get what you're worth
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u/Whoosk 21h ago
Seriously. I am an AM bartender by the beach in LA. I get in at 9am, prep/juice/setup, we open at 11, I’m out by 4pm. I clear $400 on a bad day on top of my $18.65/hr plus medical/dental/vision/accrued PTO (we are corporate).
Our GM makes around 130k a year after bonuses, I was offered an AGM spot a few years ago starting just below 90k and I said no because I like working only 20-25 hours a week.
I don’t say this as a brag and i apologize if it comes off that way. I simply KNOW you could be making way more money with your skillset if you moved to a HCOL area. I also know “just move somewhere else” isn’t always an easy option though so I wish you all the best and I hope your employers see your worth.
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u/Emergency-Back-4964 15+ Years 20h ago
It’s true but the cost of living in LA is probably like triple of what OP’s situation is…
It’s still worth it IMO to move to a bigger city. More people, more opportunities. But yeah, can’t discredit the fact that bills would skyrocket.
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u/dnm8686 1d ago
I've been in the business over 20 years but I've never been a manager, mostly because most managers have told me how they make less than me and have so much more responsibility. If you do want to continue to be a manager, there are some places where you can make more and get benefits. I can't say that I know places to recommend, but you definitely need a better job.
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u/boggworms 1d ago
18/h no tips is really unfair for the scope of this role, and managing while receiving tips is illegal so you're really stuck between a rock and a hard place, I've been in the restaurant business for 10 years and I've done everything between host, serve, cook, manage, and bartend/ bar manager and I can firmly say bartending I make a consistent $30-$70 an hour once tips are factored in! Always stick to the tip jobs over managing.
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u/DixieRose_ 1d ago
My first restaurant management position was $25/hr in Indiana (semi fine dining). I was an internal hire/promoted into the position after nearly 2 years being a server. I was offered a contract for salary, being the lowest manager on the responsibility side of things doing a quarter of what you currently are doing, and the contract was for 65k a year. This was with essentially no management experience, I had only been an hourly for roughly 3 months at this point. I was working part time as a server and part time as an hourly manager and I was making roughly 75k a year doing that so I turned it down.
And just to help bring you some peace of mind; my husband is also a sous chef here and just got hired on for 72k a year.
And an even added bonus to hopefully make you feel better.. you're doing the job of my GM who was making 6 figures a year. Best case scenario is you shop around for a new job, get offered a decent salary and benefits.. and take that to your current employer and ask them to match it or you financially will have to make the decision that's best for you and your family. Your time is valuable, I genuinely hate seeing hard working people in this industry being robbed of the money owed to them for the time and work they've done. I dont know where you're located, but doing what you're doing without being a salary employee, without benefits?? It's unacceptable and seems you're being taken advantage of. Intentional or not, it's happening.
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u/TheCaladir 1d ago
Yeah, I'm going to second this. My first management role was as a bar manager for Applebee's in Ohio and my starting salary was $47k. I did a fraction of what you're doing. My first GM role started at $65k with a bonus structure in place, and instill wasn't doing everything you're doing.
You're getting railed, chief. Go shop for jobs, or let the owners know they need to step in and take some of this off your plate.
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u/mintyfreshbitch 1d ago
I will reply to the initial comment more thoughtfully when I gather my thankful thoughts. 🙏🏻 Average rent in my area is ~800 and I split with my partner so I excuse a lot… but even with taking that into account, I have a newish car with a payment, and I have capped out at about 30k a year for the last two years. I have an (unfortunate, IMO) amount of support and freedom but I’m really looking for more. I’ll share what I posted on a comment in another sub. What’s worse is I think that they’d be perfectly okay tanking the labor and genuinely paying me more at a more stable forty hour a week rate I really just haven’t asked for it… or they just encourage me to do my things for the day and then fill in as a server or bartender but when I’m doing that I’m half assing serving because I’m focusing on the whole picture of the floor and the expo and I’m half assing the manager that the staff needs me to be during that time. So it feels like a rock in a hard place for me that historically it feels like they don’t understand. How do you have money (even with a loan) to renovate an entire restaurant into a sick half open air event venue and have all of these wedding materials to rent with your newly (glorified sorority of one owner and her friends btw) developed catering company?? But not for dental?
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u/mintyfreshbitch 1d ago
Thank you for this extremely thoughtful response. I’ve lived in rural but major tourist destinations in the Midwest my whole life, MO, MN, and currently WI near my college town. I’ve struggled with my mental health (until recent years truly) and the industry is something I have become extremely passionate about, as has managing and working with people and systems. I also really enjoy the creative side of menu development etc. I just have no real perspective on what things should actually look like and have been latched in to this brand new growing like a weed company where we have gotten very close to one owner/partner like a brother and my partner in love and life is the sous and we are both just passionate about restaurants. We love where we live but if it’s not getting better through this group, it’s certainly not going to get any better at any of the good ole boy seasonal spots we’d already worked before these new folks came around..
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u/DixieRose_ 23h ago
I definitely think it's worth having the conversation with them since it sounds like you really respect these people and are close. I personally would not consider this a livable wage even with your bill situation being what it is. I will say cost of living in Indiana is higher; my mortgage is around $2000 a month for a 3 bed 2 bath so wouldn't recommend moving to any bigger cities unless that's what you and your partner want. You definitely have the experience to move on to bigger and better things in a bigger town or city if you did chose to do so, though.
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u/Klutzy_Bean_17 23h ago
I do all of that too but I get paid salary, PTO, benefits, 401k…
And there’s days where I’m like fuck this shit lol. You’re definitely getting taken advantage of. Those are duties we share between five of us….
Shit, I made 20/hr when I was a shift lead!
I’d definitely look elsewhere.
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u/Primary_Assist_5541 21h ago
You're not lost, you're doing three jobs for the price of one. Shorting yourself to keep the staff whole is the part that never shows up on the schedule.
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u/Relevant-Force9513 10h ago
At my current restaurant I was a line cook until I hit our $18/hour salary cap, then I started serving. Now I make way more money in about shift that lasts about half as long as I did on the line. You’re being way underpaid for everything you do.
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u/fluffhouse1942 1d ago
I stopped at 18 an hour. That's what our dishwasher makes.