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Food service managers

Also called Restaurant manager, Restaurant general manager, Restaurant GM, Cafe manager, QSR manager

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 238,430 US food service managers, with median pay of $69,390 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the highest was 246,070, in May 2023, close to the May 2025 count. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 90,000 from 1910, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for food service managers: Drive-thru voice AI and kitchen automation, 2018 to 2024.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 5.8% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Food service managers: jobs and pay since 1910 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/11-9051

Chicago

Future History. "Food service managers: jobs and pay since 1910." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/11-9051.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_11_9051, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Food service managers: jobs and pay since 1910}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/11-9051}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
1850187519001925195019752000now
Country
2026
Known then as Tavern Keeper / Eating-House Keeper / Restaurant Keeper (proprietor era)
Known then as Restaurant Keeper / Proprietor of Eating Establishment (Census classification era)
Known then as Restaurant Manager / Proprietor and Manager of Eating Place (NRA professional era)
Known then as Restaurant Manager / Food Service Supervisor (chain-expansion era)
Known then as Food Service Manager / Restaurant General Manager (BLS standardization era)
Known then as Food Service Managers (BLS SOC 11-9051)
Known today as Food Service Managers (BLS SOC 11-9051)
Projected to still be called Food Service Managers (BLS SOC 11-9051)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
238K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$69,390
Est.

≈ $67,611 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1827

Giovanni and Pietro Delmonico open a small pastry shop at 23 William Street in New York City -- the origin point of the professional food service manager in America. Their nephew Lorenzo joins in 1831 and transforms the establishment into a full restaurant with a printed menu offering individual choices at prices the guest selects. Delmonico's would operate at ten locations over its history; Lorenzo's management standard -- daily personal inspection of every dish, direct supplier relationships, memorized guest preferences -- becomes the template for professional restaurant management.

Beat · 1919

March 13, 1919: sixty-eight restaurateurs from across the country gather in Kansas City and found the National Restaurant Association, pledging to represent 43,000 dining establishments. The NRA's founding agenda addresses rationing (post-WWI), price gouging, Prohibition, and union organizing -- the same labor, regulation, and supply-chain pressures that define the role today. This is the moment the food service manager becomes a professional with collective institutional representation rather than an isolated proprietor.

Beat · 1922

Cornell University opens the world's first four-year bachelor's degree program in hotel management in September 1922, with H.B. Meek as the sole professor and approximately 20 students. Hotel owners led by John Howie of Buffalo had pressed Cornell to develop the program because the 1900-1920 growth of the hotel and restaurant industries had created demand for professionally trained managers rather than promoted proprietors. Required courses include accounting, economics, culinary arts, nutrition, food preparation, and housekeeping. The Cornell Hotel School formalizes food service management as an academic discipline and begins producing the first credentialed generation of restaurant managers.

Beat · 1955

Ray Kroc opens the first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois on April 15, 1955. The McDonald's franchise model -- with its Hamburger University training program (founded 1961), standardized operations manual, and rigorous manager certification -- creates the industrial food service manager: a professional hired by a corporation to execute a documented system rather than an independent proprietor. Hamburger University graduates become the template for trained managers at every major QSR chain. By 1960, McDonald's has 200 locations; by 1970, 1,500. The chain model becomes the dominant employer of food service managers in the United States.

Beat · 2020

March 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic closes dining rooms across the United States. The restaurant industry -- which employed over 15 million workers as of February 2020 -- estimates that up to 8 million employees are laid off or furloughed within weeks. By July 2020, Yelp data shows 60% of restaurants that temporarily closed have marked those closures as permanent. The National Restaurant Association reports that 110,000 food service establishments permanently close during the pandemic. Food service managers who survive the crisis pivot to delivery-only operations, outdoor dining under emergency health rules, and ghost kitchen models. The pandemic accelerates AI platform adoption: managers who automate scheduling and cost-tracking can operate leaner through uncertain demand. Employment recovers gradually by 2022-2023 but the workforce composition shifts, with higher compensation expectations and chronic staffing challenges that persist through 2025-2026.

Beat · 2026

Restaurant365 launches R365 Intelligence in March 2026 -- an AI analytics layer that provides predictive labor demand, automated scheduling recommendations, inventory variance analysis, and food cost forecasting from a single platform. Olo AI (launched January 2026) personalizes digital menu presentation per guest for 700+ restaurant brands processing over 2 million orders per day. These launches mark the moment when AI management tools move from departmental add-ons to integrated operational platforms -- completing the transition of the food service manager's role from administrative executor to strategic accountable human in an AI-augmented operation.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace food service managers? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+5.8%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 11-9051 (Food service managers): 344.3 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 364.2 thousand in 2035, a change of +19.9 thousand (+5.8%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (30.6% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
39.6%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 11-9051.00 Food Service Managers. Shown: human-rated β = 0.396, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.188 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.604; GPT-4-rated β 0.417. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for food service managers

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereMonitor food and beverage cost in real time using AI-powered invoice management from MarginEdge or Plate IQ, reviewing daily P&L dashboards that auto-populate from vendor invoices captured via OCR, identifying menu items where actual food cost percentage has drifted above theoretical, and using AI-generated menu engineering analysis to guide repricing or substitution decisions before the variance compounds.

Monitor food and beverage cost in real time using AI-powered invoice management from MarginEdge or Plate IQ, reviewing daily P&L dashboards that auto-populate from vendor invoices captured via OCR, identifying menu items where actual food cost percentage has drifted above theoretical, and using AI-generated menu engineering analysis to guide repricing or substitution decisions before the variance compounds.[8],[10],[2]

Where your edge is

The manager's value shifts from data entry and weekly reconciliation to the strategic decisions the data surfaces: which items to drop from the menu, which vendors to renegotiate, and which price increases customer mix can absorb. Own the menu engineering conversation; let the tool own the math.

AI is sitting alongside you hereBuild and manage the weekly labor schedule using AI-generated demand forecasts from 7shifts or Restaurant365, reviewing AI-optimized shift coverage proposals against forecasted covers and labor law constraints, approving employee swap requests, and managing callouts in real time

Build and manage the weekly labor schedule using AI-generated demand forecasts from 7shifts or Restaurant365, reviewing AI-optimized shift coverage proposals against forecasted covers and labor law constraints, approving employee swap requests, and managing callouts in real time; concentrating manager attention on the coaching interventions and cultural signals that reduce the 79% annual turnover rate the industry benchmarks.[5],[9],[2]

Where your edge is

AI eliminates most of the schedule-build time (7shifts 2025: several hours/week → minutes). Reinvest those hours in floor time: the managers who reduce turnover below the ~79% industry average do it through relationship-building, not better spreadsheet skills. Use the schedule as a coaching tool: track who is requesting swaps and why, who is habitually early or late, and use that data for individual development conversations.

AI is sitting alongside you hereOversee daily financial close and cash management: using Toast or Restaurant365 AI dashboards to review AI-generated sales reconciliations, tip distribution summaries, and variance-flagged discrepancies

Oversee daily financial close and cash management: using Toast or Restaurant365 AI dashboards to review AI-generated sales reconciliations, tip distribution summaries, and variance-flagged discrepancies; physically verifying cash drawer counts and authorizing bank deposit amounts; signing off on the daily P&L that MarginEdge or R365 Intelligence prepares automatically; and escalating variances that exceed threshold (loss prevention, data entry error, or system integration failure) to ownership.[9],[8],[2]

Where your edge is

AI generates the reconciliation; you hold the accountability. The manager who understands the numbers behind the dashboard (food cost theoretical vs. actual, labor percentage vs. budget, cover count vs. forecast) can interrogate AI-generated reports rather than just approving them. Invest in restaurant P&L literacy: a manager who can read a daily P&L and explain every variance in five minutes is protecting the business from both software errors and employee theft.

Where food service managers go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

General and Operations Managers

Food service managers who operate multiple locations or move into district/regional director roles are effectively general operations managers, managing P&L accountability, team development, vendor relationships, and operational standards across a portfolio. The transition broadens the scope from a single location to a department or business unit but draws directly on every competency the food service manager has built: cost management, labor optimization, staff development, quality control, and customer experience ownership. The upward path within restaurant chains (assistant manager → GM → district manager → regional director) is a direct line. Pivoting outside the food and beverage sector requires investing in transferable financial reporting tools (Workday, NetSuite vs. MarginEdge) and demonstrating P&L accountability in a formal business context rather than a service context.

What you'd add
  • · Multi-unit financial management: consolidated P&L, capital allocation across locations
  • · Enterprise workforce management tools: Workday, ADP, or UKG beyond restaurant-specific platforms
  • · Formal business reporting: budget variance analysis, board-level operational summaries
  • · Supply chain and vendor management at scale: contract negotiation, SLA governance
  • · Change management methodology: leading operational transformations across multiple teams
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of food service managers changed since 1827?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Ledger, key ring, and walk-through inspection (pre-industrial food service management)

    The restaurant keeper of the nineteenth century managed through physical presence and personal knowledge. The tools of the trade were a cash ledger, a walk-in pantry with daily perishables, a staff of cooks and servers recruited locally, and a proprietor whose name was on the door and whose reputation was the brand. Lorenzo Delmonico at the William Street location memorized every regular guest's preferences; he personally approved every dish before it left the kitchen and negotiated directly with suppliers at the Washington Market each morning. Managing a restaurant meant being the restaurant -- there was no administrative layer between owner and operation. The "tool" was the manager's own trained judgment.

  • Cash register, standardized recipes, and chain operating manuals

    The NCR mechanical cash register, by 1900 installed in virtually every commercial establishment in America, gave restaurant managers their first systematic control over cash flow. More consequential was the emergence of the chain restaurant operating manual in the 1920s-1950s: Howard Johnson's, White Castle, and later McDonald's developed written standards -- cleaning schedules, recipe cards with weights and measurements, portion specifications -- that transferred management knowledge from the individual proprietor's memory into a documented system. A manager trained in one Howard Johnson's could, in theory, run any other. This was the first step toward separating the role of "restaurant manager" from "restaurant owner" as a distinct hired professional position.

    Effect on the work

    Chain restaurant expansion throughout the 1920s-1950s created the first large-scale market for hired restaurant managers as distinct from owner-operators. By 1939, more than a hundred thousand eating establishments operated in the US; the shift from independent proprietors to hired managers accelerated after WWII as franchise models proliferated.

  • Electronic cash register and POS terminal (IBM 3651, NCR, Datasym)

    The electronic cash register arrived in restaurants in the 1960s and was supplemented by the first true POS terminals -- IBM's store controllers of the early 1970s and the Datasym food-service systems of the mid-1970s -- which moved transaction data from paper tape to electronic records. For the food service manager, the POS system was transformative: end-of-shift X-reports and Z-reports gave the manager daily sales totals by category for the first time, without manual counting. The manager now had a quantitative pulse on the business each day: how many covers, which items sold, when the rush peaked. This was the first layer of data-driven management in food service, and it changed the role from intuition-only to intuition-plus-data.

    Effect on the work

    POS data enabled the first systematic labor scheduling: managers could correlate historical cover counts with required staffing levels and begin building schedules on data rather than gut feel. This was modest compared to modern AI scheduling, but it was the first step toward the analytical management practice that defines the modern role.

  • Restaurant management software (MICROS, Aloha, and early inventory systems)

    MICROS Systems (founded 1977, dominant by the late 1980s) and Aloha Technologies (founded 1993) introduced dedicated restaurant management software that integrated POS, back-office accounting, and inventory in a single system. For the food service manager, these platforms shifted administrative work from paper logbooks and calculator reconciliation to screen-based data entry and report generation. The manager could now produce a daily P&L in an hour rather than half a day. Labor scheduling moved from graph-paper charts to printed spreadsheets. The back-office administrative burden was reduced but not eliminated -- it was relocated from ledgers to keyboards. MICROS was acquired by Oracle in 2014, marking the end of the standalone restaurant-software era and the beginning of cloud-based SaaS platforms.

  • Cloud POS (Toast, Square for Restaurants, Revel) and digital labor scheduling

    Toast launched its cloud-based restaurant POS in 2013; Square for Restaurants followed in 2018; Revel Systems in 2010. The shift from on-premise server to cloud POS gave the food service manager real-time visibility from anywhere: cover counts from a phone, sales-by-hour dashboards, and instant server performance reports without waiting for the end-of-shift paper. Digital labor scheduling tools (7shifts founded 2014, HotSchedules founded 1999 and acquired by Fourth) moved schedule-building from a notebook exercise to a platform that could automatically generate shift coverage based on historical demand patterns. By 2018, a manager with a smartphone had access to data that would have required a corporate analyst in 2005. The administrative layer of the role began a sustained compression.

    Effect on the work

    Cloud POS adoption across hundreds of thousands of US restaurant locations by 2018 created the data infrastructure on which AI management tools would be built starting in 2020. The cloud-POS era did not automate management tasks -- it digitized them. The AI era beginning in 2020-2023 actually automated the analysis that was previously done manually on that digitized data.

  • Drive-thru voice AI and kitchen automation (Presto, SoundHound, Yum Brands voice AI)

    The first generation of AI-powered drive-thru voice ordering systems reached commercial deployment between 2018 and 2024. Presto Automation deployed voice AI at select McDonald's and other QSR locations; SoundHound AI acquired Presto's voice product in 2024 and announced a next-generation omnichannel platform in February 2025; Yum! Brands (Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut) deployed its Byte by Yum! AI platform across 25,000 restaurant locations globally by 2025, integrating AI into ordering, inventory, and labor management. For the food service manager, drive-thru voice AI changed the role of the front-line order-taker but concentrated more complex decisions on the manager: when the AI misorders, when a customer escalates past the kiosk, when the system fails during a rush -- those exceptions route to the manager. The QSR manager of 2025 manages an AI-augmented ordering system rather than a human cashier, but their accountability for the guest experience has not diminished.

  • AI restaurant management platforms (7shifts AI, Restaurant365 Intelligence, MarginEdge, Winnow, Toast AI)

    Beginning in 2020-2023 and accelerating through 2026, a generation of AI-native restaurant management platforms reached commercial maturity and began substantively automating the administrative backbone of the food service manager role. 7shifts (2025 Labor Management Report) documents AI scheduling reducing schedule-build time, with labor cost savings of 3-5%. MarginEdge ingests vendor invoices via OCR, auto-generates a daily P&L by outlet, and surfaces theoretical-vs-actual food cost variances -- eliminating what was previously a monthly bookkeeping exercise. Winnow AI deploys computer-vision scales at kitchen waste bins, achieving 40-70% food waste reduction in full-service restaurant deployments (Winnow Impact Report 2025). Restaurant365 Intelligence (launched March 2026) provides predictive labor demand, AI-generated scheduling recommendations, and food cost forecasting. The net effect is profound: the administrative hours that previously defined "being a restaurant manager" -- the schedule build, the invoice reconciliation, the end-of-month P&L prep -- are now largely automated. The surviving manager value concentrates on the things these systems cannot do: taste the soup, smell the walk-in, de-escalate the table-eight complaint, coach the prep cook who has been over-portioning pasta every Saturday.

    Effect on the work

    The BLS projects +6% employment growth 2024-2034 for food service managers despite AI platform adoption, because demand for restaurants continues to grow and the irreducible human floor of the role -- accountability, sensory inspection, in-person staff management -- is resistant to full automation. The AI platforms are raising the bar for what a competent manager looks like (data-fluent, AI-tool-proficient, more floor-present) while lowering the cost of the administrative tasks that no longer require dedicated management hours.

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Food Service Managers employment and pay by year

On record since1827
Latest US employment238,430 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$69,390 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+5.8% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

In other countries

The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.

  • United Kingdom (UK SOC 1222)

    Employment, 2025
    46,000, ONS ASHE 2025 Official statistic Report an errorONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Table 14): employee jobs in SOC 1222 Restaurant and catering establishment managers and proprietors, United Kingdom, 2025 (ASHE "number of jobs", thousands x1000; excludes self-employment). Open Government Licence v3.0.
    Median pay, 2025
    £30,513, ONS ASHE 2025 Official statistic Report an errorONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Table 14.7a): median gross annual pay for all employee jobs in SOC 1222 Restaurant and catering establishment managers and proprietors, United Kingdom, 2025. Open Government Licence v3.0.

  • Australia (ANZSCO 1411)

    Employment, 2025
    61,000, ABS Labour Force Survey Official statistic Report an errorABS Labour Force Survey (Detailed), table EQ08: employed persons in ANZSCO 1411 Cafe and Restaurant Managers, national (summed across sex and state/territory), annual average of 4 quarterly estimates.
    Median pay, 2025
    A$85,488, ABS Employee Earnings May 2025 Official statistic Report an errorAnnualised (x52) from A$1,644 median weekly earnings. ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025: median pay for full-time non-managerial employees paid at the adult rate, before tax. Surfaced via the Jobs and Skills Australia occupation profile.
View all 28 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
191090,000n/aEst., Estimate derived from 1910 U.S. Census… Researched contextReport
1939170,000n/aEst., Restaurant-ing Through History Researched contextReport
1956n/a$5,200Est., University of Missouri Libraries Researched contextReport
1980320,000$18,000Est., BLS (employment) Researched contextEst., BLS Monthly Labor Review (1984) (pay) Researched contextReport
2000282,290$31,720BLS OEWS 2000 Official statisticReport
2003229,960$37,260BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
2004206,340$39,610BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
2005191,420$41,340BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
2006189,050$43,020BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
2007191,460$44,570BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
2008196,080$46,320BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
2009190,250$47,210BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
2010186,830$48,130BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
2011183,940$48,110BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
2012189,510$47,960BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
2013191,030$48,080BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
2014198,610$48,560BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
2015201,370$48,690BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
2016201,470$50,820BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
2017208,110$52,030BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
2018219,160$54,240BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
2019235,470$55,320BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
2020197,010$56,590BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
2021210,680$59,440BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
2022231,100$61,310BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
2023246,070$63,060BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
2024244,230$65,310BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
2025238,430$69,390BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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