What is a typical day like in your job ( Culinary Arts )?

Hi Keaton,

I used to work in hospitality and restaurants for 8 years before my current job. I managed the front of the house (waiters, hosts and bar), but had some visibility to the kitchen as well. From my experience I can say that a standard day in a restaurant looked something like this:

1. Morning - Shift starts at around 9-10am. The first tasks are to prepare for the lunch time. For waiters they would set tables and learn the days specials. Bar staff would cut fruit (lemons, limes) and prepare everything else they need (ice, juices) to serve drinks in the lunch seating. Kitchen would prepare all their lunch items (soups, sauces, pre-cooked goods).
2. Lunch - From 11:30-3pm we served lunch. This would mean busy table service for the waiters, preparing drinks to orders for the bar, and cooking food for the kitchen.
3. Break (between services) 3-5:30pm we would use this time to eat our lunch, and then prepare everything for the evening service
4. Dinner - 5:30-11pm Serving and cooking food to order, this time just for a longer period than at lunch. Especially towards the end of the week (Thursday-Saturday) this time is very hectic.
5. Close and Clean 11-12pm Closing down and cleaning the restaurant. This would include a lot of washing pots, cleaning the kitchen, bars and the restaurant area.

As you can see the days are long. However luckily most restaurants operate in two shifts (morning and evening) or if you have long shifts through the day you may only work 4 days a week.

The above was a standard at most places I worked at, but I know this may vary between countries and restaurants themselves. A good way to get a feel to what a day in a restaurant would look like would be to ask one of your local restaurants if they take on part-time staff and see for yourself. Most restaurants also do a trial shift before you are hired. This is a great opportunity to see what the job would be like and what their normal day looks like