Written by: JJ Tan, Founder, Jelly
Key Takeaways
- UK hotel GMs shortlist F&B Manager CVs on commercial metrics such as GP percentage, COGS, labour cost and wastage, rather than job titles.
- A strong CV requires verifiable figures. Generic templates provide layout but not the source data needed to defend numbers in interview.
- Key CV sections include a quantified professional profile, core competencies, commercial experience bullets, UK licences (Personal Licence, HACCP, food safety) and IT systems.
- Weak duty-list statements should be rewritten as strong, mechanism-backed achievements that survive GM scrutiny on revenue base, measurement method and VAT treatment.
- Jelly turns the invoices, price changes and POS sales you already handle into the GP, COGS and sales-mix figures this CV template asks for, so every number you include is current, auditable and defensible in interview.
What Should A UK Food And Beverage Manager CV Include?
A UK food and beverage manager CV template for hospitality should contain a professional profile, a core competencies section, a professional experience section with quantified commercial metrics, UK qualifications and licences, education, and an IT and systems section covering POS, EPOS, inventory and accounting software. Keep everything on generally no more than two sides of A4. Treat this as a ceiling. A shorter, tightly focused CV can be stronger. Use reverse-chronological order and a single-column layout.
The six sections in full:
- Professional Profile – three to four lines identifying role level, specialism and one or two commercial achievements
- Core Competencies – a keyword-matched list in UK hospitality terminology
- Professional Experience With Commercial Metrics – achievement bullets with GP, COGS, labour cost and wastage figures where they exist
- UK Qualifications And Licences – Personal Licence, HACCP level, food safety, First Aid, with awarding body and date
- Education – formal qualifications in reverse-chronological order
- IT And Systems – POS, EPOS, inventory management, accounting integrations
The UK Food And Beverage Manager CV Template
This copy-paste template gives you a structure that matches those six sections. Drop it into Word, replace the bracketed placeholders with your own details, and mirror the job description’s phrasing before you submit.
[Full Name]
[City, County] | [Phone] | [Professional Email] | [LinkedIn URL]
Professional Profile
F&B Manager with [X] years’ experience across [hotel/multi-outlet/pub group] operations. Track record of delivering GP improvement, COGS control and labour cost efficiency in [venue type]. Commercially focused and operationally hands-on. Experienced in leading teams of up to [X] across [number] outlets.
Core Competencies
- GP management and dish-level costing
- COGS control and food cost analysis
- Labour cost management and SPH optimisation
- Stock and wastage management
- Menu engineering and sales-mix analysis
- Supplier negotiation and price monitoring
- Rota planning and labour scheduling
- Conference and banqueting (C&B) operations
- HACCP compliance and food safety management
- Natasha’s Law allergen controls and PPDS labelling
- POS and EPOS reporting
- Licensing Act 2003 compliance and DPS responsibilities
Professional Experience
F&B Manager, [Hotel/Group Name], [City] – [Month Year] to [Month Year]
- Ran F&B across [X] outlets turning over approximately £[X] a year
- Delivered GP of [X]% against a budget of [X]% through menu engineering and supplier renegotiation
- Reduced food COGS from [X]% to [X]% over [period] by implementing weekly wastage tracking and invoice-level cost monitoring
- Held labour cost at [X]% of net sales by scheduling a team of [X] across [X] shifts per week
- Led allergen compliance in line with Natasha’s Law, implementing PPDS labelling and 14-allergen controls across all outlets
Assistant F&B Manager, [Hotel/Group Name], [City] – [Month Year] to [Month Year]
- Supported GP reporting and weekly flash P&L review for [X]-cover restaurant and bar operation
- Helped cut wastage by [X]% through portion control and stock rotation improvements
- Managed rota for a team of [X] while keeping labour cost within agreed budget
UK Qualifications And Licences
- Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders (APLH), [Awarding Body, e.g. BIIAB], [Year]
- Level 3 Award in Food Safety in Catering, [CIEH / RSPH], [Year]
- Level 3 / Level 4 HACCP, [CIEH / RSPH], [Year]
- First Aid at Work, [Provider], [Year]
Education
- [Degree / HND / Hospitality Management Diploma], [Institution], [Year]
IT And Systems
[POS system] | [Inventory/costing platform] | [Accounting software, e.g. Xero] | Microsoft Office (Excel, Word)
Hospitality CV Personal Statement Examples
These examples show the tone and level of detail to aim for. Each runs to 60–80 words. Replace bracketed placeholders with your own verified figures.
Hotel F&B Manager
Commercially driven F&B Manager with [X] years’ experience across four-star hotel operations, including fine dining, bar, room service and C&B. Proven record of maintaining GP at [X]% across a mixed sales portfolio while leading teams of up to [X]. Experienced in HACCP compliance, Natasha’s Law allergen controls and Licensing Act 2003 DPS responsibilities. Seeking a senior F&B role within a hotel group where operational rigour and commercial performance carry equal weight.
Assistant F&B Manager Stepping Up
Assistant F&B Manager with [X] years’ hands-on experience in high-volume hotel and restaurant environments, ready to take full departmental ownership. Contributed to a [X]% reduction in food wastage over [period] through improved stock rotation and portion control. Confident in rota management, supplier liaison and allergen compliance. Holds Level 3 Food Safety (RSPH) and APLH. Looking for an F&B Manager role with direct P&L accountability.
Multi-Site Operations Candidate
F&B Operations Manager with [X] years’ experience across [X] sites, overseeing combined annual F&B revenue of approximately £[X]. Delivered consistent GP improvement across the portfolio through centralised menu engineering, supplier consolidation and weekly sales-mix analysis. Experienced in multi-site labour scheduling, HACCP governance and allergen management across diverse menus. Holds Personal Licence (APLH, [Year]) and Level 4 HACCP (CIEH, [Year]). Seeking a group-level F&B role with multi-outlet P&L responsibility.
Which UK Qualifications Should An F&B Manager CV List?
UK hotel GMs and HR leads screen for specific credentials because each qualification maps to a legal or operational risk the employer carries. List the ones that prove you can manage those risks and phrase them clearly.
Personal Licence (APLH) Under The Licensing Act 2003
Any premises selling alcohol by retail must have a Designated Premises Supervisor who holds a Personal Licence under the Licensing Act 2003. The DPS manages the premises day to day on behalf of the licence holder. To apply for a personal licence to sell alcohol in England and Wales you must be 18 or over and hold an accredited licensing qualification, such as the Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders (APLH), which is one of several accredited routes. List it as: Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders (APLH), [Awarding Body], [Year]. Personal Licence held, [Issuing Council].
Level 3 And Level 4 HACCP / Food Safety
Level 3 is the level generally recommended for supervisory and management roles in food safety, including those responsible for HACCP-based food safety management systems. The legal duty is that staff be adequately trained or supervised for their work. Level 4 signals senior food safety governance capability. In England, three Ofqual-accredited bodies award food safety qualifications: the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH), Highfield Qualifications and the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH). In Scotland, the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland (REHIS) is the long-established awarding body for food hygiene and HACCP. Always list the awarding body and the year of award.
Natasha’s Law / Allergen Management
Natasha’s Law (the PPDS allergen labelling requirements) came into force on 1 October 2021. It requires food businesses producing prepacked-for-direct-sale food to label it with a full ingredients list and emphasised 14 allergens. There is no statutory “Natasha’s Law certification”. The Food Standards Agency does not award one, and claiming it on a CV is an error a hiring GM will notice. Instead, evidence operational competence: “Implemented PPDS labelling and 14-allergen controls across all outlets in line with Natasha’s Law.”
First Aid At Work
The Home Office section 182 guidance under the Licensing Act 2003 lists trained first aiders as a public safety matter licensing authorities may consider. For a senior F&B Manager, a current First Aid at Work certificate with three-year renewal is a straightforward credential that removes a question mark.
Food Hygiene Level 3
Distinct from HACCP, a Level 3 Award in Supervising Food Safety in Catering (offered by awarding bodies such as RSPH, CIEH and Highfield) is the standard supervisory or management-level food hygiene qualification. The Level 4 Award in Managing Food Safety in Catering is the higher managing-level qualification. List the level you hold with awarding body and date.
How To Show Commercial Impact On A Hospitality CV
Your CV only convinces when the commercial claims behind it stand up to scrutiny. The UK food and beverage manager CV template for hospitality becomes powerful once you back each bullet with clear evidence. The four rewrites below show the pattern: weak version, strong version and what a GM will ask in interview.
GP Percentage
- Weak: “Responsible for food and beverage profitability.”
- Strong: “Improved blended F&B GP from [X]% to [X]% over [period] through menu repricing and supplier renegotiation, using weekly invoice-level cost data.”
- What the GM will ask: How did you measure it? What was the revenue base? Was it net of VAT?
COGS And Wastage
- Weak: “Managed stock and reduced wastage.”
- Strong: “Reduced food COGS from [X]% to [X]% over [period] by introducing weekly wastage logs, tightening portion specs and switching [ingredient] supplier after a [X]% price increase identified through invoice monitoring.”
- What the GM will ask: What was the mechanism? Can you show the before and after on a P&L?
Labour Cost And SPH
- Weak: “Managed a team of 15 front-of-house staff.”
- Strong: “Maintained labour cost at [X]% of net sales across a team of [X], scheduling to demand and reducing overtime by [X]% over [period], while improving sales per labour hour from £[X] to £[X].”
- What the GM will ask: Did your labour cost include employer NI and pension? What was the revenue base?
Menu Engineering
- Weak: “Priced menus and updated dishes seasonally.”
- Strong: “Ran quarterly sales-mix analysis across [X]-item menu, repositioning [X] low-margin, high-popularity dishes to improve cash GP per cover by [X]% without reducing covers.”
- What the GM will ask: What data did you use? How did you track the outcome?
The only figures cited as benchmarks in this guide come from Jelly’s own operator data. In the first three months of use, operators see an average 2 percentage point gross margin gain and a 3% food cost reduction. Dish costing drops from roughly 28 minutes to about 3 minutes per item, and admin time falls by 10–20 hours a month. Use your own verified figures in the CV and use these benchmarks as a plausibility check.
Format And ATS Guidance For UK Hospitality CVs
Word Vs PDF
Submit a Word (.docx) file when an ATS portal or recruiter explicitly requests it. Submit a text-based PDF for direct email applications and when no format is specified. A text-based PDF preserves layout and prevents accidental edits. The PDF must be generated from an editable source as real, selectable text. A scanned or photographed PDF is effectively an image and cannot be parsed by any ATS. Test it by selecting and copying a line of text before sending. This is the practical answer behind searches for food and beverage manager cv template uk word and food and beverage manager cv uk pdf: keep both versions and use the right one for the channel.
The Two-Page Rule
Two sides of A4 is the UK standard for an experienced candidate. Treat it as a ceiling. A page and a half of strong, relevant content beats two pages padded with duties. If the CV spills onto a third page, cut in this order: interests, GCSE line, bullets under roles more than eight years old, then the profile down to three lines. Never shrink the font below 11pt or compress margins to hit a page count.
ATS Formatting For Hospitality Portals
UK hospitality employers screen CVs through specialist high-volume platforms including Tribepad, Talos360, Eploy and Pinpoint. These systems are tuned for speed and keyword matching. The single-column rule is non-negotiable. A two-column CV with a skills sidebar is the most common formatting mistake for hospitality applications because left-to-right parsing scrambles columns consistently. Use standard section headings (Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications), standard fonts (Arial or Calibri at 11–12pt), and avoid tables, text boxes, icons, headers and footers. Name the file FirstnameLastname_CV.pdf.
UK Date Format And Page Size
Use a consistent month-and-year format throughout, such as January 2023 to March 2025. Build the document on A4, not US Letter. A PDF built on Letter prints with the wrong margins on a UK office printer.
F&B Manager CV Vs Hospitality Manager CV: What’s The Difference?
An F&B Manager CV is scoped to food and beverage P&L: GP, COGS, wastage, menu engineering, supplier cost and beverage margin. A Hospitality Manager CV covers a broader remit that includes rooms, revenue management, front office and F&B combined. It is judged on total departmental revenue, RevPAR contribution and cross-departmental leadership. For a hotel F&B Manager role, the hiring GM wants F&B-specific metrics rather than a generalised hospitality narrative. For a multi-outlet or group operations role, the scope expands to include multi-site P&L and central procurement. Match the CV’s metric focus to the role’s actual accountability, and whichever scope you choose, ensure the metrics are real and defensible.
Why Jelly Is The Best Hospitality Operations Platform For F&B Managers Who Need To Evidence Commercial Performance
The hardest part of writing a UK F&B Manager CV is having credible, defensible numbers. Most operators do not share P&L detail with their managers. Many managers work from memory, estimates or figures their employer will not confirm in a reference. A hotel GM will interrogate every metric in an interview. Jelly gives you the data to answer those questions with confidence.
Jelly’s core workflow starts with automated invoice scanning. Every invoice line item, including quantity, SKU, price and tax, is digitised via email or photo with no manual data entry. The Price Alert feature flags every supplier price movement the moment a new invoice arrives, giving managers concrete evidence to negotiate credits or switch suppliers. Ingredient costs update with every invoice, so dish-level GP stays live. A red percentage appears when a dish drops its margin and green when it improves. The Flash Report delivers a daily, weekly or monthly view of GP margin calculated from actual costs and POS sales data. The Sales Mix report uses real-time POS integration to show which dishes are most popular and which are most profitable. That combination gives you the raw material for menu engineering claims on a CV. Digitised invoices push directly to Xero with one click, which cuts bookkeeping time by around 90%.
Jelly’s commercial impact shows up quickly. The platform costs a flat £129 per month per location with no per-user charge. Operators generate initial value in the first week. As the benchmarks above show, operators typically see a 2 percentage point margin gain and a 3% food cost reduction within three months. Dish costing time drops from almost half an hour to a few minutes per item, and admin time falls by double-digit hours each month.
Real operators back this up. Chef-Owner Murat Kilic at Amber, a Mediterranean restaurant in East London, saves £3,000–£4,000 per month through invoice automation, price change alerts and real-time menu costing. He describes Jelly as what keeps his business alive. One operator moved GP from 65% to 72% within 12 weeks on approximately £500,000 in revenue.
For more on the skills and responsibilities that underpin these metrics, see Food And Beverage Manager: Responsibilities And UK Law and Essential Skills For An Effective Food & Beverage Manager UK.
Conclusion
A UK F&B Manager CV is a commercial document. Hotel GMs shortlist on GP, COGS, labour cost and wastage evidence, and they favour candidates who can explain the mechanism behind every number they present.
Jelly turns the invoices, price changes and POS sales you already handle into the GP, COGS and sales-mix figures this CV template asks for. That means every number you write down is one you can defend in the interview.
Use the UK food and beverage manager CV template for hospitality in this guide as your starting point. Then use Jelly to generate the figures that make it credible.
For further reading on qualifications, career paths and job market context, see Best Food & Beverage Management Certificate UK: A Guide and Food & Beverage Manager Jobs In UK Hotels: 2026 Guide.
Turn your invoices into CV-ready figures
Frequently Asked Questions
How Long Should A UK F&B Manager CV Be?
Two sides of A4 is the UK standard for an experienced candidate. One page is appropriate for a graduate or school leaver. Three pages are justified only for academic, senior clinical or technical, very senior executive and contractor or consultant roles with many short engagements. For a hospitality role, treat two pages as the ceiling and use the space for quantified achievements under each position. If the CV runs long, cut lower-priority sections such as interests, the GCSE line and older bullets before you touch font size or margins.
Should I Send A Word Or PDF CV?
Send a text-based PDF by default so your layout stays consistent and accidental edits are less likely. Use Word (.docx) only when the employer, recruiter or ATS portal specifically requests it. Whichever format you send, the text must be real and selectable. A scanned or photographed PDF cannot be read by any ATS. Test by selecting and copying a line of text before submitting, and name the file FirstnameLastname_CV.pdf.
Do I Need A Personal Licence To Apply For An F&B Manager Role?
Some F&B Manager roles do not legally require the post-holder to hold a Personal Licence, but any premises selling alcohol by retail must have a Designated Premises Supervisor who does. In practice, most hotel and multi-outlet F&B Manager roles either require the candidate to hold a Personal Licence already or expect them to obtain one quickly after appointment. The qualification route is the Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders (APLH), available through BIIAB-accredited providers including some local councils. Holding it before you apply removes a question mark and signals operational readiness.
What Is The Difference Between Level 3 And Level 4 HACCP?
Level 3 HACCP, awarded by bodies such as CIEH, Highfield or RSPH, is the standard management-level food safety qualification. It covers hazard analysis, critical control points, monitoring procedures and corrective actions, and it is the baseline expectation for a supervisory or management role in UK hospitality. Level 4 HACCP focuses on managing the development, validation, implementation, verification, review and maintenance of a HACCP-based food safety management system, including designing and auditing it. Level 4 HACCP, such as the RSPH Level 4 Award in Managing the HACCP System, is aimed at supervisors, managers and HACCP team leaders and suits senior food safety roles, including those responsible for compliance across multiple sites. List whichever level you hold with the awarding body and the year of award.
How Do I Show GP On A CV If My Employer Does Not Share The Figures?
Many UK F&B managers face this problem. If your employer does not share P&L detail, start with the metrics you can access directly. Wastage logs, stock counts, rota costs, supplier invoices and till reports often give enough data to calculate a directional food cost percentage even without a formal P&L. You can also describe the mechanism rather than the exact outcome. “Introduced weekly wastage tracking and invoice-level cost monitoring, reducing food cost percentage over [period]” is credible even without a precise figure. Use bracketed placeholders on your draft and fill them with verified figures before submitting, and never invent a number. If you use Jelly, every invoice line item is digitised automatically and dish-level GP stays live, which gives you a defensible, auditable source for every metric on the CV.
Can I Use The Same CV For Hotel And Restaurant Roles?
The structure and credentials sections can stay consistent, but the metric focus and language should change with each role. Hotel F&B Manager roles typically emphasise running multiple outlets at once, setting budgets, controlling food and labour costs and taking responsibility for departmental profit and P&L reporting. Restaurant and F&B roles tend to prioritise revenue and profitability targets, cost and commercial control, menu planning and engineering, and service efficiency, alongside guest experience and service standards. Explicit menu work appears less often than people management, shift planning and cost control. Read the job description several times, identify the commercial metrics the employer names explicitly and ensure those terms appear in your core competencies and experience bullets. ATS platforms used by hospitality employers match keywords against the vacancy, so exact phrasing matters.
How Quickly Can I Get The Metrics I Need For My CV?
With Jelly, operators generate initial value in the first week. Once suppliers send invoices to a dedicated email address, or the kitchen photographs invoices into the platform, Price Alert and spending insights go live within 24 hours. Dish-level GP updates automatically with every new invoice. The Flash Report gives a GP margin view daily, weekly or monthly. For a manager who has never had clean cost data before, the shift from spreadsheet estimates to live, invoice-backed figures is immediate. As the benchmarks above show, operators typically see a 2 percentage point margin gain and a 3% food cost reduction within the first three months.
