Responsibilities

• An F&B manager is in charge of any place that serves food and beverages, from fast food establishments to five-star restaurants. Their duties involve the administrative work of paying people, paying taxes and paying suppliers. In addition, they deal with customer complaints and handle the human resource responsibilities of hiring and firing workers.
  
  A major part of a F&B manager's job is the retention of good staff. This is important because of the high turnover associated with the food and beverage industry. While firing people is important, retaining good people is more important as incompetent staff will often leave on their own accord.
  
  

Academic Qualifications

• F&B managers often are promoted from within, starting out as food and beverage workers and making their way up. However, as of June 2010, employers are starting to prefer managers with the academic qualifications of an associate or bachelor's degree.
  
  

Personal Qualifications

• While academic qualifications are steadily rising in importance, personal qualities are still the backbone of what makes a good F&B manager. A good F&B Manager will have solid communication skills and a great deal of initiative. What's more, she will intimately understand the jobs of those she supervises.
  
  An F&B manager needs to be fit and energetic, as these positions often require long days--sometimes as long as 15 hours. Finally, an F&B manager will do very well if he can at least communicate in multiple languages because of the high number of immigrants working in the F&B sector.
  
  

Job Outlook

• The job outlook for F&B managers will generally be positive, regardless of the economy, because management positions are subject to the same high turnover as lower-level positions. Moreover, the amount of jobs available is expected to rise by 5 percent between 2008 and 2018.
  
  

Compensation

• As of June 2010, the average salary for an F&B manager was roughly $46,000 per year. The lowest 10 percent earned just under $30,000, per year while the highest 10 percent earned roughly $77,000 per year.
  
  Because of the large variety of F&B positions, from those running an airport cafeteria to those running a five-star restaurant, there are salary variations between kinds of food and beverage service. Traveler accommodation--for example, hotel restaurants--pays an average of roughly $54,000 per year, while limited-service eating places pay an average of roughly $41,000 per year.