Who is the assistant banquet manager?
The hospitality industry has many, many different career and job opportunities. We’ve spent the last while exploring a whole bunch of job descriptions and figuring out which people do what in hospitality. To refresh your memory, check out the organisational structure of a hotel and who works where in the system.
What does an Assistant Banquet Manager do?
Assistant Banquet Managers have the job task of helping assisting Banquet Managers operate a food-serving facility.
As it says in the job title, they’re there to assist, so the duties of Assistant Banquet Managers will vary depending on the needs of their Banquet Manager and the type of event they’re catering for. Events can include weddings, corporate functions, political events, and PR launches.
Assistant Banquet Manager responsibilities:
- Supervising personnel, assigning tasks to kitchen or service workers
- Ensuring kitchens and dining facilities are clean and properly decorated
- Purchasing equipment, ordering supplies or food ingredients and coordinating service details
- Maintaining inventory and compliance with food safety regulations and laws
- Helping with hiring and training employees
- Performing administrative functions and preparing employee work schedules.
Who does the Assistant Banquet Manager report to?
Why, the Banquet Manager, of course!
Qualifications
An Assistant Banquet Manager needs to have a good education, like a  Diploma in Food and Beverage Management and the right kind of industry experience and plenty of enthusiasm.
Skills
- Excellent customer service
- Clear communication
- Leadership and management
- Critical-thinking and reasoning
- Ability to meet deadlines and multitask
- Creative problem-solving
- Ability to work long hours under pressure.
Working conditions
Depending on the size of the hotel, or the scale of the event being catered for, the working conditions of an Assistant Banquet Manager can involve very long, stressful hours. The pressure can be enormous as customer service moves to a whole new level when the customer is the mother of the bride.
Assistant Banquet Managers move from dealing with one disaster (What do you mean this hall has been double booked?) to another (Someone dropped the wedding cake) and handle it all with ease and professionalism to ensure that the event goes off as smoothly as possible and that the guests leave the function pleased with the food and service.
If you’re a problem-solver and you like being constantly challenged and putting out fires, you’ll thrive in this job.
Earning potential
The earning potential for an Assistant Banquet Manager depends on the size of the establishment and the amount of previous work experience. It’s generally between R8,000 and R20,000.
Job opportunities
An Assistant Banquet Manager can work in a variety of hospitality fields – anywhere there’s a food-serving facility that needs to be managed! This includes: hotels, casino hotels, holiday resorts, sports resorts, cruise liners, beach retreats, spa and recreation establishments, destination spas, bush/safari lodges and guest houses, to name a few.
As for growth potential, there’s the position of Banquet Manager to aspire to. If you’re looking to go even higher, you could aim to be Catering Director, if you put in the right amount of hard effort and worked your way to the top.
Do you have what it takes to be an Assistant Banquet Director?
