Restaurant org chart example
A single-site restaurant of about thirty, drawn as the two halves anyone who has worked in one knows: the kitchen under the head chef, the floor under the front-of-house manager, and a general manager who owns the whole night.
How a restaurant is usually structured
An owner sits above — sometimes working the floor, sometimes seen only on payday — and a general manager runs the restaurant. Under the general manager the split is absolute: back of house and front of house. They have different hierarchies, different vocabularies, different pay structures and often different first languages, and the one place they meet is the pass, where the expediter calls the tickets.
The kitchen keeps the brigade, thinned out. A head or executive chef runs it; a sous chef is the second and covers the opposite shift; below them, cooks are named by station — grill, sauté, larder, pastry — rather than by seniority, and the dish team is its own small crew. The station is the job, which is why a kitchen chart of generic cook cards tells a chef nothing they need.
The floor runs on shift leadership rather than layers. A front-of-house manager or assistant general manager holds it, with a bar manager for the bar's own crew and a head server or captain on each shift. Servers, hosts, bussers and runners sit under the front-of-house manager because the rota moves them nightly. Support — bookkeeping, purchasing, events — is one or two people, often part-time or contracted.
Typical titles by level
The vocabulary these charts use, from the top down. Titles vary by country and by company; the levels don't.
| Level | Titles you'll see |
|---|---|
| Ownership and leadership | Owner or Operating Partner, General Manager, Assistant General Manager, Area Manager (multi-site) |
| Kitchen | Executive or Head Chef, Sous Chef, Chef de Partie or Station Chef (Grill, Sauté, Larder, Pastry), Line Cook, Prep Cook, Kitchen Porter or Dishwasher |
| Front of house | Front of House Manager, Bar Manager, Head Server or Captain, Server, Host, Busser, Runner, Bartender, Barback, Sommelier |
| Support | Bookkeeper, Purchasing or Inventory Manager, Events & Marketing Coordinator, Cleaning Contractor |
Where these charts go wrong
Restaurant charts fail by listing every server and cook in a row, which produces a chart four screens wide and stale by the weekend; by drawing the restaurant once per shift, so the same cook appears twice; by putting the bar under the kitchen, where it has never reported; and by leaving the dish team off, which every kitchen notices immediately.
Questions people ask
- What is the difference between front of house and back of house on an org chart?
- They are two separate reporting lines that meet only at the general manager. Back of house is the kitchen under the head chef; front of house is the floor and the bar under the front-of-house manager. Drawing them as one hierarchy misrepresents how a restaurant is run, and how its people are paid.
- Who does the bartender report to?
- The bar manager, who reports to the front-of-house manager, or straight to the general manager in a bar-led restaurant. Bartenders are front of house, never kitchen, even though the bar has its own stock, its own ordering and its own crew of barbacks.
- How do you chart a restaurant group with several locations?
- Each restaurant keeps a chart like this one, with its general manager at the top. Above them sits a group chart: an area or operations manager over the general managers, often an executive chef over the head chefs, and shared finance, marketing and people functions. Do not merge the two — a group chart with two hundred servers on it is unusable.
- How many staff per manager in a restaurant?
- Wide, and shift-based. A front-of-house manager commonly runs 12 to 20 floor staff across a week, a head chef 8 to 15 in the kitchen, a bar manager 3 to 6. What sets the number is not the count but the shifts: every service needs someone in charge, which is why the second exists at all.
Other industries
- ManufacturingTwo shifts, and quality kept out of production's line.
- LogisticsDispatch runs the day; supervisors run the people.
- ConstructionOffice and field, meeting on every project.
- Software startupSquads under a CTO; product managers on a dotted line.
- NonprofitThe board on top, programmes beside the money.
- Medical practiceA clinical line and a business line, crossing at nursing.
- SchoolDepartments led by teachers who also manage.
- HotelSix divisions around one general manager.
- Marketing agencyDisciplines own people; pods own the work.
- Security & facilities servicesSites stacked under supervisors; a 24-hour control room.
- Sales teamRegions for closers, a team for openers, RevOps beside them.
- Accounting firmA partner pyramid, three service lines.
- Law firmPractice groups, and the business side that runs the firm.
- ChurchA board that governs, a pastor who leads, ministries below.
- IT departmentRun, build and secure, under one director.
- HR departmentPartners, specialists and operations: the three legs.
- Local governmentElected above appointed, and two officers who answer to the council.
- Utility companyField crews, a 24-hour control centre, and a regulator in the room.
- BankThree lines of defence, drawn as lines.
- Staffing agencySales desks, recruiting desks, and a back office that pays two thousand people.
Or start from a structure — functional, divisional, matrix or flat — or from your own spreadsheet. The guides cover a reorg, a merger, an assistant's chart and a consultant's deliverable.
Make it yours
Download the spreadsheet, replace the names, import it — the chart redraws itself. Or start empty and drag people until it's true. Building is free at any size.