Bar Manager CV Examples & Writing Guide

Here is a full CV for a bar manager with nine years behind and above the bar. The name and the venues are made up. Read the top third the way an owner reads it: venue type, sales volume, pour cost, headcount, licence. Everything else is supporting evidence.

Bar manager hiring is a money decision. The person reading your CV is trying to work out whether you will protect their drinks margin or bleed it. Four things answer that question in the first fifteen seconds.

• Venue type and size. A 40-seat neighbourhood bar and a 300-capacity nightclub are different jobs. Put seat count, average covers or a sales figure next to every employer so nobody has to guess.
• Pour cost or GP. If you have ever held a number, name it. If you improved it, name both numbers. This single line separates people who managed a bar from people who worked in one.
• Headcount and turnover. How many bartenders and barbacks did you hire, train and put on the rota? Staff turnover is expensive, so a retention number is worth as much as a sales number.
• Personal licence and DPS experience. Every venue selling alcohol needs a designated premises supervisor who holds a personal licence, and the bar manager is often that person. If you hold one, put it near the top, not buried at the bottom.

Four or five lines at the top, written for the exact venue you are applying to. Lead with years, venue type and one hard number. Skip the career objective format unless you are moving up from bartending, and even then a personal statement usually reads better.

The most common mistake on a bar manager CV is describing the job instead of the result. Everyone writes rotas. Not everyone can say what their rota did to wage cost. Rewrite each duty until it carries a number, a scale or a change.

Split them so a manager can scan. Money and stock skills first, because that is what the job is. Do not list "hard working" or "team player"; every applicant does and it costs you a line.

• Cost and stock: pour cost and GP control, recipe costing, weekly stocktakes and variance, par levels, ordering and deliveries, shrinkage control, waste and breakage tracking
• People: recruitment and interviewing, bar training programmes, rotas to forecast, wage cost control, performance conversations, tips and tronc allocation in line with the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023
• Product: cocktail menu development, spirits and wine knowledge, cellar management, draught line cleaning and troubleshooting, keg yield, batching, glassware and garnish specs
• Compliance and safety: Licensing Act 2003 and the four licensing objectives, Challenge 25 and spotting fake ID, refusals procedure, food hygiene, allergen information (the 14 allergens), incident reporting
• Systems: Zonal, Lightspeed, Toast, Square, Micros, Craftable, Rotaready, Deputy or Planday, Excel or Google Sheets for cost sheets
• Service: guest recovery, VIP and reservation handling, event and banqueting drinks packages, working with the SIA door team on busy nights

Alcohol licensing in England and Wales runs under the Licensing Act 2003; Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own licensing laws, so check the rules if you are moving. List the qualification name, the year and, for a personal licence, the issuing council. If the job needs a personal licence and you do not hold one yet, say when you will have it.

• Responsible alcohol service training. Challenge 25 and refusals training are the standard, and many pub companies and bar groups run their own courses, so name the one you did and the year.
• Personal licence and DPS. Every alcohol sale must be authorised by a personal licence holder, and each venue names a designated premises supervisor (DPS) who must hold one. You get a personal licence by passing the one-day Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders (APLH) and applying to your local council.
• Food safety. Level 3 Supervising Food Safety in Catering is the usual one for anybody supervising a bar that serves food; Level 2 Food Hygiene covers the team. Food hygiene ratings are public, so a manager who held a 5 should say so.
• First aid. Not required for every role, but a plus in venues with late-night crowds. Emergency First Aid at Work (one day) or First Aid at Work (three days) from a recognised provider is what employers look for.
• Product credentials. Cellar management training (pubs with Cask Marque accreditation value it), WSET Level 1 or 2 in wines or spirits, and the Cicerone Certified Beer Server are optional but they show you know product, not just paperwork.

Education matters less here than in most fields. A hospitality foundation degree is a nice line, but nobody is turning down a manager who held 80% GP because they did not finish university. Put education after licences and training and keep it to two lines.

If you have never had the manager title, you are not applying with nothing. Most bartenders in a busy venue already do half the job. Your task is to pull that work out of the shift and name it.

1. 1List every closing or opening duty you owned alone: cashing up, banking, keg changes, ordering when the manager was off, the rota when they were on holiday.
2. 2Count things you have never counted. How many bartenders have you trained? How many transactions a shift? What was the bar taking on your nights?
3. 3Name the reports you have touched, even if you did not own them: stock sheets, comp and void reports, variance, waste logs.
4. 4Get your personal licence and Level 3 food safety before you apply. They are inexpensive, the APLH course takes a day, and they remove the easiest reason to skip you.
5. 5Ask your current general manager for one line you can quote about cost or training, then put that line in your covering letter, not your CV.

One page is fine early on; two pages at most once you have more than a few years and several venues. Reverse-chronological. No photo, no date of birth, no marital status: UK employers do not ask for them and including them can make a hiring manager uncomfortable. Save the file as a PDF named firstname-lastname-bar-manager.pdf.

• Put venue size and sales volume in the employer line, not in a bullet. It gives every number underneath it context.
• Pub companies, bar groups and hotels run applicant tracking systems. Independents usually do not, but the advert still tells you which words matter. Mirror them: GP, pour cost, stock control, rotas, wage cost, P&L, personal licence, DPS, Challenge 25, the EPOS by name.
• Do not use columns, text boxes or a photo header. Parsers drop them, and a manager reading on a phone at 11pm will not fight the layout.
• Dates in months and years. Hospitality has short stints and seasonal work, and hiding the months makes an owner assume the worst.
• If you worked a seasonal or pop-up venue, say so on the line. "Summer season, 2024" reads as normal. An unexplained four-month job does not.

“I read the top four lines and go straight to the numbers. If somebody tells me their pour cost and what it was when they started, I call them. If the CV says "managed a team in a fast-paced environment" and nothing else, I already know they never saw a cost sheet.”