How to Start a Career in the Pub Industry

Do you have a friendly, outgoing personality? Are you happy working unsocial hours while friends are out enjoying themselves? Do you enjoy mixing with people from all walks of life? Are you hard working and conscientious with aspirations to become your own boss? If you can answer yes to these questions, a career in hospitality may be just what you’re looking for. You can start off working part-time at your local pub, with a view to eventually running your own public house. Or perhaps working for the big breweries or pub chains is more to your liking and you can work your way up the ladder to eventually become manager of a large pub/restaurant. The opportunities are numerous – so where do you start?

Job Basics

• Entry Salary: Around £17,000 depending on age, hours and skills.

• Experienced Salary: £25,000+ and can be considerably higher.

• Average hours: 40+ (full-time); 12-20 (part-time) including evenings, weekends and bank-holidays.

What do Bar Staff do?

• Serve beers, wines, spirits, soft drinks, and snacks to customers at the bar.

• Be able to operate the till and give change.

• Clear and clean tables and bar as customers come and go.

• Change barrels and optic bottles as required.

• Clean beer lines as required.

• Have good communication skills to be able to converse with customers.

What Qualities Should a Bar Person Have?

No matter where you start in the hospitality trade, you will need the following skills in almost all professions: a pleasant and outgoing personality, excellent customer service skills and the ability to remain calm in all situations. It’s not always easy, but a welcoming smile, especially to new customers, goes a long way to breaking the ice and making them feel at home. You will need a good grasp of mathematics to be able to total orders, work the till and give change.

How do You Become Qualified?

You can get into the pub trade in a number of different ways. If working in a local pub tickles your fancy, you’re unlikely to need any formal qualifications. You can often start part-time (maybe when you´re at college), and go full-time on completion of your course. In most local pubs, honesty, a pleasant personality, and the ability to work hard in unsocial hours, will stand you in better stead than formal qualifications. You can learn all aspects of running a pub on the job, before, a few years down the line, deciding whether to apply for your own pub license.

On the other hand, you can study corporate hospitality at university and apply to the big breweries and pub chains to join their management training programmes. Once you’ve learnt all aspects of the hospitality industry, you will be in a position to begin managing the company’s businesses. Working your way up from the smaller venues, you could end up managing their largest flagship establishments along with the big performance based salary that goes with it.

We’ve got jobs for you!

If a career in the pub industry is your calling, we’ve got plenty of pub jobs for you! Download the app now and start applying.