Busboy Job Description, Skills, and Salary
Get to know about the duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and skills requirements of a busboy. Feel free to use our busboy job description template to produce your own. We also provide you with information about the salary you can earn as a busboy.
Who is a Busboy?
Busboys, as the name implies, are responsible for ensuring a clean and pleasant dining experience in a restaurant or catering establishment. This is accomplished by clearing, disinfecting, or resetting the tables. They make sure that the restaurant is well-stocked with essentials like cutlery, plates, napkins, cups, and glasses of water. Busboys are sometimes known as food runners or Bussers.
Restaurants rely on bussers or busboys to guarantee that customers have a pleasant dining experience and that seating runs efficiently.
They are an important member of the hospitality team who assists employees with a variety of tasks to provide visitors with a great dining experience, such as greeting customers, answering inquiries, and alerting Servers when clients require assistance. They also assist the hotel personnel with filling drinks as necessary.
As a busboy, you’ll be responsible for keeping an eye on the tables to see if anyone has finished their current meal, and then transporting the dirty dishes to the dishwasher. They also re-set the table with fresh linens and place settings for the new group of people who would be eating at the table.
When necessary, Busboys assist the wait staff in bringing meals to the tables. They make certain that visitors’ needs are satisfied or brought to the attention of the waitstaff and management. Busboys can stand or walk for long periods.
Busboys work in the food industries and are typically employed by restaurants or catering companies. Busboys must be physically active, love interacting with others, especially in a fast-paced environment, and have a good sense of humour.
To accommodate the demands of several meal services, busboys are expected to perform extended shifts. They’re always on standby to wipe off pots, pans, and containers before starting the day’s cooking. In a similar spirit, after washing dishes, they put up drying racks and place them in appropriate spots to make it easier for cooks to serve meals.
A high school diploma or a General Education Development certificate is required to work as a busboy. More importantly, you should have relevant prior job experience in a restaurant, however, this is not a requirement. Many bussers also improve their employment by obtaining a food handler certification card, which can be earned by completing a brief course or program on food safety.
A successful Busboy must be well-organized and meticulous in his work. A professional busboy should have excellent hand-eye coordination and the ability to give customer service that meets or surpasses both staff and patron expectations.
Busboy Job Description
What is a busboy job description? A busboy job description is simply a list of duties and responsibilities of a busboy in an organization. Below are the busboy job description examples you can use to develop your resume or write a busboy job description for your employee. Employers can also use it to sieve out job seekers when choosing candidates for interviews.
- Working with restaurant personnel to ensure that clients have a pleasant eating experience.
- Cleaning surfaces and clearing tables of soiled utensils, napkins, and plates so that they are ready for the next guests.
- Interacting with guests, answering questions, and informing wait staff of their need to demonstrate excellent customer service skills.
- Taking soiled dishes, glassware, and silverware to the kitchen to be cleaned.
- Replacing used condiments, filthy tablecloths, silverware, and linens to ensure that each diner has everything they require for their meal.
- Ensuring an efficient working relationship, keeping in touch with the waiters, hosts, chefs, and other members of the team.
- Providing support to the wait staff by delivering food to tables as needed.
- Participating in weekly or daily departmental meetings to keep managers and the assigned team up to date on any cleaning and maintenance issues.
- Housekeeping the floors, putting out the trash, and other cleaning chores.
- Handling dishes, flatware, glasses, straws, napkins, and other dining supplies on hand.
- Adhering to all industry safety and sanitary policies at all times.
- Notifying servers when a table’s glasses are empty and need to be refilled.
- Assisting with drink refills when necessary.
- Assuring that the restrooms are clean and convenient for use.
- Restocking utensils and napkins, as well as attending to other dining room requirements.
- Undertaking other work responsibilities as stated by your supervisor and the assigned schedule.
Qualifications
The following qualifications are required to work as a busboy:
- GED certificate or high school diploma
- Previous work experience as a busboy.
- The ability to remain standing or walking for long periods of time.
- Skills in customer service
- Good attitude on the team.
- Excellent communication and customer service abilities.
- Well-organized and detail-oriented.
- Food production and service knowledge, including safe storage techniques, handling methods, and legal and regulatory requirements
- Pleasant personality with an emphasis on guest’s happiness.
Essential Skills
You must master the following skills to succeed as a busboy in the food industry:
- Excellent customer service Attitude
While the team concentrates on customer satisfaction, the top busboys understand that they must go above to make guests feel welcome and appreciated. A busboy must prioritize customer service in all they do, from directing diners to the restroom to keeping the floor clean of crumbs. A busboy’s day will be spent interacting with diners of the time. When dealing with guests, they must have a nice, polite, and professional manner.
- Ability to communicate
The capacity of a busboy to respond to client requests without making mistakes that could taint the service, whether in a five-star institution or the corner diner, is enhanced by good communication skills. As a busboy, you must be able to converse with clients and relay messages to them.
An excellent busboy should be able to recall the wants of his or her customers so that the kitchen staff and servers can communicate clearly. They should also be able to remember and express any messages that the kitchen wishes to communicate to the consumer.
- Pay close attention to the details.
This entails paying attention to the tiniest details that can lead to an unpleasant dining experience for a guest. A guest can have a bad experience merely by spotting little crumbs left on the table or in a chair, thus busboys must be aware of such items as quickly as possible. This ability will also aid a busboy in navigating a crowded room without colliding with others or spilling food or beverages.
- Stamina
Busboys require endurance because they are frequently asked to stand for up to nine hours every shift and lift 30 to 50 pounds. Throughout your shift as a busboy, you will be on your feet or walking swiftly. However, physical stamina is a vital characteristic for a busboy to possess.
- Hazard Awareness:
When working in a potentially harmful environment, such as a kitchen, this skill is essential. It is critical for busboys to be informed of and obey all health and safety requirements. Many organizations value employees who are knowledgeable about workplace hazards.
- Good Team Spirit
To be successful, a busboy must be a good team player. This is because busboys do not work alone. They collaborate with the cooks, other busboys, and servers to ensure that clients enjoy a pleasant dining experience in a kitchen setting. The nature of the job necessitates a collaborative mindset and the ability to work well with others.
Being a team player necessitates a busboy’s ability to prioritize tasks while keeping the team’s goals in mind. A busser’s ability to follow directions, anticipate requests, and know when to fill in for one of the other team members during a hectic lunchtime is especially crucial.
- Dexterity
While performing your tasks as a busboy, you should be agile. This is because the busboy’s job entails carrying and handling many plates and utensils at once.
- Multi-tasking:
Busboys may be responsible for more than one person regularly, thus they must be able to multitask to deal with a large number of people.
- Interpersonal Skills:
Customer service requires interpersonal skills, which will be practised on a daily basis in every company. Interacting with others around you helps you develop interpersonal skills. Empathy, negotiating, listening, creative thinking, patience, and tolerance are examples of interpersonal skills. This is a necessary ability for busboys to engage easily with clients.
- Strength:
Busboys are frequently asked to handle a large number of plates and platters at the same time. They may also take full trash bags to the dumpster or rearrange tables to accommodate more people. Busboys remain relevant in this market because they have the strength and capacity to execute all of these things.
How to Become a Busboy
Understanding the job description and responsibilities of a busboy is the first step toward becoming a busboy. However, you can begin your busboy profession by following the procedures outlined below.
- Education:
The minimal educational qualification is a high school diploma. A General Educational Development (GED) certificate is also accepted by many employers. A university degree may not be required for busboys because they do not require specific education beyond high school.
- Training:
On-the-job training accounts for the vast bulk of the training. Those who want to work as busboys should get some hospitality and food handling training. This is because some employers prefer to hire individuals who have completed some type of hospitality or catering training. This demonstrates that they are learning the skills and knowledge required to function as a Busboy.
Similarly, most newly hired busboys are given on-the-job training by their bosses or other kitchen staff. This training could include procedures for safety and hygiene, as well as some customer service fundamentals.
- Experience :
The most popular approach for busboys to get experience is through on-the-job training. Employers usually seek out busboys with years of experience working in restaurants or the catering industry when recruiting busboys.
- Skills:
Those wishing to work as busboys must possess particular abilities that will help them succeed in this position.
Busboys must be cheerful and friendly because they will be dealing with teammates and customers that require assistance. Your colleagues will rely on you to notice even the tiniest irregularities, so being detail-oriented is crucial. Various businesses may prefer to select passionate applicants with good personalities and strong customer service abilities rather than seeking someone with many years of expertise in some areas where busboys operate.
- Apply for relevant Busboy jobs.
After you’ve mastered the necessary abilities and experience for this role, you may begin looking for and applying for busboy jobs online applications are available for busboy vacancies. This can be accomplished by searching the internet for food industries hiring for the position of busboy.
To apply for a busboy position, you must first construct a résumé. On this CV, be sure to highlight your previous work experience, education, and skills, and tailor it to busboy employment. Mention any previous work experience you’ve had in the foodservice industry first, followed by any customer service positions.
If you are contacted for an interview after applying, you must also prepare for it. You can learn how to answer busboy interview questions by searching the internet.
- Certification
Busboys are not required to be certified to do their duties. If you want to advance in the food sector, you should seek the ServSafe program’s food safety certification. The National Restaurant Association offers this accreditation to demonstrate your knowledge of food preparation, serving, and storage procedures. This certification can be achieved by passing an exam and completing an online course.
Where to Work as a Busboy
Busboys work in a variety of restaurants, ranging in size, pricing, and location. They work in huge chains, small family-owned restaurants, and casual dining establishments.
Busboys help to balance the workload of full-time wait staff in hotels, motels, pubs, resorts, restaurants, cafes, canteens, and other food service companies. Cleaning up after guests have finished dining, moving dishes to the dishwashing area in the kitchen, maintaining dishwashing equipment, cleaning up after visitors have finished eating, cleaning up broken dishware, checking the inventory of cleaning supplies, and keeping the area clean are some of their responsibilities in these places.
Busboy Salary Scale
A busser or busboy earns an average of $23,060 per year or $11 per hour. On the low end, they can earn $18,440 or $9 per hour, depending on where they work and what state they live in.
This pay rate may vary depending on the candidate’s level of experience as well as the company’s size and location.
It’s worth noting that full-time busboys are often granted medical, dental, and vision insurance after 60 to 90 days on the job.