From pouring tequila shots to mixing a mean mojito, you’re an encyclopedia of beverages and cocktails. Thanks to your upbeat attitude and vast knowledge of mixology, you thrive in a remarkably fast-paced workplace.
Proving your skills can be tricky—it’s not like you can invite the recruiter out for a drink. However, you can still impress them if your resume accurately describes your expertise.
We’re here to help you with that. Our cocktail waitress resume examples and resume tips will do the trick—check them out to level up your career.
Related resume examples
What Matters Most: Your Mixology Skills & Customer Service Experience
As a cocktail waitress, you may work in a pub, a nightclub, a restaurant, or somewhere else entirely. The one thing all these places have in common is that you’re always working with people, and that takes a lot of skill.
You’re an excellent multitasker with a great memory, an expert at food pairing, and a hard worker who’s not afraid to work long hours. Combine that with your proficiency in various point-of-sale (POS) systems, and you’ve got yourself the perfect candidate for the job.
Just like all the cocktails you’ve mastered, your resume requires a solid blend of ingredients to stand out. To make your resume skills section shine, avoid being generic and try to really dive into the nitty-gritty of your unique abilities.
Recruiters often use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to check whether your resume contains the keywords they’re looking for, so be ready to swap your skills in and out to match the job description.
9 most popular cocktail waitress skills
- Mixology
- Food Pairing
- Toast POS
- Square POS
- Cash Handling
- Alcohol Knowledge
- Clover POS
- Order Management
- Conflict De-escalation
Sample cocktail waitress work experience bullet points
You seamlessly juggle multiple orders, leverage your skills in customer service to keep everyone happy, and encourage an increase in revenue through confident upselling.
In the work experience part of your resume, try to touch on each of those accomplishments. To give them that extra bit of zing that makes them special, try to back up each achievement with a way to measure your impact.
Talk about the number of drinks you’ve served per shift or about the new mix you introduced that was a hit with the customers and increased daily revenue. Numbers will add extra weight to your claims.
Here’s how you can do this in your own resume:
- Built relationships with customers and customized drinks to cater to individual preferences, increasing nightly sales by 18%
- Managed cash and credit card transactions accurately using Square POS and Clover POS, maintaining over $2,500 in nightly sales
- Upsold menu items effectively, including offering drink pairing based on the meal, increasing alcohol sales by 9%
- Served up to 200 customers per night, including order handling, offering personalized suggestions, mixing drinks, and accepting payments
Top 5 Tips for Your Cocktail Waitress Resume
- Flaunt your knowledge of the industry
- New drinks crop up all the time, especially now when non-alcoholic beverages are on a definite rise. Show off your knowledge of various cocktails by discussing a particularly successful mix when making a cover letter or mentioning the number of recipes you’ve memorized in your resume.
- Show that you’re ready right away
- Let the employer know you’re good to go by talking about any mandatory licenses you already have. This includes things like the TIPS certificate, ServSafe Food Handler, or ServSafe Alcohol, depending on your location. You may also need another type of food handler’s permit or a bartender’s license.
- Express your flexibility
- If you’ve worked across many different shifts, that’s a huge plus, so add it to your work experience. You could say, for instance, “worked nights, weekends, and holidays with 97% attendance over 2 years.”
- Go above the essentials
- If you’re a seasoned mixologist with an arsenal of certificates to match, include them in their own little section in your resume. Things like the BASSET certification, the Cicerone Program, or the WSET certifications can really elevate your resume.
- Emphasize your customer service skills
- At the end of the day, dealing with customers is a major part of your role, so show recruiters that you’re a people person. Talk about making personalized recommendations, resolving conflicts, and maintaining a high customer satisfaction score.
That’s okay—simply talk about transferable skills from past roles and your education. This includes work in hospitality, food service, and various customer-centric jobs, such as a call center employee.
Keep your resume short and snappy, maxing out at one page. If you have lots of previous experience, cut it down to only include your most recent jobs, or the ones that were most relevant.
The “work experience” section of your resume is great for that, as is your cover letter. Mention instances of training junior colleagues, assisting the shift leader in inventory management, or counting and distributing everyone’s tips at the end of the night.
