Be sure you use the proper cover letter format to make your cover letter readable and professional.
Waitress Cover Letter Example Template (Text Format)
Contact Person’s Name
15 Dorset Street
Sheffield
S10 2FW
07123 456 789
contact.person@gmail.com
Dear [Mr/Ms/Mx] [Contact Person’s Name],
I’m writing to you regarding the waitress role I saw on [Website Name]. With more than four years of experience in the food industry and a BA in food service management, I firmly believe I can bring excellent customer service and promote sales at [Restaurant Name].. As a regular diner at [Restaurant Name], I’m thrilled by the opportunity to serve at the restaurant where my family and I have celebrated many happy occasions.
While working at Café Emmeline and La Maison Blanche, I honed many skills useful in the food service industry, such as customer service, food handling techniques, and multitasking in fast-paced environments. As a senior waitress, I was entrusted with managing responsibilities including opening and closing the restaurant, resolving customer issues, and stepping in to supervise the wait staff and care for customers when managerial staff were busy.
My accomplishments include:
- winning the Waitress of the Month award 10 times
- being personally named and praised by customers on 80+ Google Maps reviews
- increasing sales at La Maison Blanche by 20% using effective upsale techniques
Here’s just one example of my exceptional customer service: A customer during one of my shifts complained that the food they ordered wasn’t cooked to their liking. Without hesitation, I offered to have it remade and apologized for any inconvenience. As the kitchen prepared the new dish, I engaged the customer in conversation and even offered a complimentary dessert. The customer ended up loving the new dish and dessert, eventually leaving a glowing review on the restaurant’s social media page. I would bring the same level of friendliness, communication, and problem-solving to maintain [Restaurant Name]’s reputation as a warm, high-quality family-style restaurant.
I’ve attached my CV and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Yours sincerely,
[Your Name]
How to write a waiter or waitress cover letter
Before you begin writing, make sure you know how to write a cover letter in a way that makes you seem like the best candidate for the job.
Whether you’re looking for your first restaurant job or are an experienced food service worker, you need your waiter or waitress cover letter to show restaurant managers that you can keep customers happy while working in a fast-paced environment.
Here are 3 cover letter tips to help you stand out from the crowd and land your next water or waitressing job:
1. Highlight your hard and soft wait staff skills
Given that wait staff work with servers, cooks, and management to serve customers, you need excellent soft skills to succeed and have fun in the restaurant business. Soft skills (traits that positively affect how you work and interact with others) that are especially important for the food service industry are teamwork and interpersonal skills.
Other great soft skills to include on your waiter or waitress cover letter include:
- Communication
- Multitasking
- People skills
- Customer service
- Flexibility
- Problem solving
- Conflict resolution
- Time management
- Organisational skills
- Good memory (for prices, menus, etc.)
- Reliability
- Attention to detail
If you don’t have previous food service experience, stressing your soft skills on your waiter or waitress cover letter is a good way to still get noticed by employers.
While superior soft skills are critical for earning repeat customers, landing big tips, and satisfying your manager, hard skills are no less important to restaurant servers.
Hard skills are job-specific abilities learnt through experience and training. You should tailor your cover letter to include the hard skills specified in the ‘Requirements’ section of the job advert.
Add some of these hard skills to your waiter or waitress cover letter to assure employers you won’t need much training:
- Maths skills (especially quick mental maths)
- Point of sale (POS) systems
- Knowledge of restaurant machinery
- Foreign language skills
- Bartending skills
- Knowledge of food pairings
- Food handling
- Good hygiene practices
2. Connect your waitress cover letter to the restaurant
To show you’re genuinely interested in working for your target restaurant and aren’t just sending out applications everywhere — even if you are — mention a connection you have with the restaurant (or brand if it’s a chain restaurant).
For example, are you a regular customer at the restaurant? Have you celebrated a special occasion there? If you don’t know much about the restaurant, take some time to research it online and visit in person.
Visiting in person is also a great way to form personal connections with the staff and help managers put a face to your application once you submit it.
Restaurant employers are more likely to grant interviews to and hire people who are personally referred. So, if applicable, don’t forget to mention the name of an employee who pointed you to the position and can speak to the skills on your CV.
3. Discuss similar experiences if you’re new to food service
While landing your first job in food service can be difficult, you can increase your chances of being hired by using similar experiences to demonstrate wait staff–relevant skills. For example, describe any kind of customer service roles you’ve had in the past (even if it wasn’t food service–related), such as volunteering at a night shelter.
If you’re a fresh graduate from university, other experiences that demonstrate an ability to multitask in a high-pressure environment include:
- serving as a camp counselor
- being an assistant warden in a dormitory
- doing an internship
- participating (and placing) in competitions, such as sport and academic competitions
- organising a campus event
- completing a high-intensity language immersion program abroad (which can also highlight foreign language skills that might be a plus to the restaurant)
Remember to make a CV that highlights your waiting staff-related experience, too.
