Food and Beverage Manager interview questions and answers

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Food and Beverage Manager Interview Questions

Your ideal Food and Beverage (F&B) Manager candidates should have extensive restaurant experience and familiarity with all tasks required daily. Under certain circumstances, F&B Managers have to prepare drinks, serve guests or even wash dishes. During your interview process, make sure your selected candidate can manage those duties and isn’t afraid to step in and take action to save the day.

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What does a food and beverage manager do?

Food and Beverage (F&B) Managers coordinate all F&B and day-to-day operations within budgeted guidelines and high standards. They’re responsible for the venue’s smooth function and for delivering an excellent guest experience.

For this role, your candidates should know how to recruit and train their team members. Keep an eye out for candidates with team management skills combined with a customer service attitude. For better results, tailor these questions to meet your specific needs. Your F&B Manager will increase your customer engagement, so it’s useful to hire someone who understands your culture and your customers’ needs.

Operational and Situational questions

• What do you currently like in our restaurant and what would you change?
• Are you familiar with health and safety regulations? How often do you inspect their implementation?
• Walk me through the process of designing a new menu.
• What are the trademarks of high-quality food service?
• What innovations would you bring to ensure our restaurant is at the top of the list in customers’ preferences?
• How do you measure cost and revenue? What cost-reducing methods have you found effective in the past?
• What’s your approach to preparing a special menu? (e.g. vegan or gluten-free)
• How do you choose ingredients? How do you balance cost and quality?
• Walk me through the recruitment process you follow for a new team member.
• How do you train your team?
• Do you use performance appraisal methods? If so, what methods have you found the most effective?

Behavioral questions

• Describe the menu (or specific plate/drink) you designed that you’re the proudest of.
• Have you ever participated in the opening of a new restaurant? What was your role?
• Describe a situation where you had to deal with a restaurant emergency, like a power outage.
• Recall a time a customer was dissatisfied with your service. How did you handle their complaints?
• Have you ever fired someone from your team? Why did you have to do that and how did you deal with it?