How To Become A Dining Room Server: What It Is and Career Path

What is a dining room server and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Dining room servers play a huge role in the customer experience of each guest in a restaurant, cafe, hotel, and other food establishments. Their main job is to serve food and drinks to customers, but there is so much more to it than that. Dining room servers are also responsible for answering customers' queries, suggesting dishes or drinks, and managing customer concerns with a professional attitude.

A day in the life of a dining room server involves various tasks, such as seating customers at tables, taking orders, serving meals, and cleaning up tables. They coordinate with the kitchen staff and management to ensure that every meal service runs smoothly, and there are no mistakes with customers' orders.

There is generally no strict educational requirement to become a dining room server, although most employers may require at least a high school diploma or GED. Experience in customer service is a plus, but depending on the establishment, applicants with zero experience may still qualify for the job.

On average, the salary of a dining room server per year is $26,000, which is around the minimum wage, and they make extra money from tips.

ScoreDining Room ServerUS Average

Salary

2.3

Avg. Salary $29,540

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

6.2

Growth rate 9%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

8.4

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 1.17%

Asian 7.54%

Black or African American 9.97%

Hispanic or Latino 13.46%

Unknown 5.63%

White 62.23%

Gender

female 64.91%

male 35.09%

Age - 39

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 39

Stress level

6.2

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

6.1

Complexity level is intermediate

7 - challenging

Work life balance

10.0

Work life balance is excellent

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a dining room server

Explore dining room server education requirements

Most common dining room server degrees

Bachelor's

42.4 %

High School Diploma

26.1 %

Associate

21.6 %

Start to develop specific dining room server skills

Skills	Percentages
Fine Dining	12.99%
Food Service	12.42%
Cleanliness	9.80%
Wine	7.27%
Beverage Orders	7.24%

Complete relevant dining room server training and internships

Accountants spend an average of Less than 1 month on post-employment, on-the-job training. New dining room servers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a dining room server based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real dining room server resumes.

Research dining room server duties and responsibilities

Schedule all reservations and plan seating arrangements with management prior to dinner service.
Contribute wine and food pairing knowledge to allow for guarantee customer satisfaction during dining experience.
Clean and polish glass shelves and doors of service bars and equipment.
Used a POS to charge members and their guests for monthly billing.

Prepare your dining room server resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your dining room server resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a dining room server resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable dining room server resume templates

Build a professional dining room server resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your dining room server resume.