The full example
Everything below is fictional. The venues are described rather than named, and the achievements are the kind of thing a real pub manager does — written the way they should appear on a CV, not inflated.
Pub manager CV — example
Header
[Full Name] [Town, UK] · [phone] · [email]
Professional summary
Pub manager with six years in managed and tenanted pubs, currently running a 160-cover community pub with a garden and a 70/30 wet-to-food split. Designated Premises Supervisor, accountable for wet and food GP, the cellar, a team of 16 and the events calendar that keeps midweek trade alive. Looking for a larger managed site or a first multi-site role within a pub company.
Core skills
Wet and food GP management · Weekly stock counts and line-by-line variance Cellar management and cask conditioning · Beer line cleaning schedule Rota writing against weekly sales forecast · Recruitment and induction Licensing, DPS duties and Challenge 25 · Incident and refusals logs Community events: quiz, live music, sports screenings, seasonal calendar Supplier ordering and brewery relationship · Garden and terrace trading EPOS reporting (Tevalis) · Rota and labour software (S4 Labour)
Experience
Pub Manager — 160-cover managed community pub with garden, Shrewsbury
Apr 2023 – present
· Hold wet GP and food GP to the company targets through weekly stock counts,
a line-by-line variance review and a standing spec check with the kitchen.
· Run the cellar: cask conditioning, stillaging, weekly line cleans and gas
checks, with the records ready for every brewery quality visit.
· Write the rota for 16 staff against the weekly sales forecast, moving hours
into the garden and the Sunday roast session when the forecast calls for it.
· Built a weekly events calendar — Tuesday quiz, monthly live music, major
sports fixtures — that gave the pub a reason to be busy Monday to Thursday.
· Act as DPS: refusals and incident logs, staff authorisations, door policy
on fixture nights and the relationship with the local licensing officer.
Assistant Manager — town-centre pub with sports screens, Telford
Jun 2021 – Mar 2023
· Ran late trading on Friday and Saturday as senior on site, including door
staff briefings, dispersal at close and the cash-up.
· Took over the weekly drinks order and the wet stock count, and cut the
variance by chasing wastage and spillage recording at the bar.
· Covered the manager’s full duties for six weeks during a vacancy, including
the brewery review and the quarterly health and safety audit.
Bar Supervisor — village pub with 40-cover dining room, Ludlow
Sep 2019 – May 2021
· Opened and closed as keyholder, set the floats and reconciled the tills.
· Kept the cellar to the brewery’s standard between the manager’s visits,
including changing casks and kegs and the weekly line clean.
· Trained new bar staff on cask dispense, Challenge 25 and the till.Education and certifications
Personal Licence (APLH Level 2) — 2020; DPS since 2023 BIIAB Level 2 Award in Beer and Cellar Quality — 2021 Level 3 Award in Supervising Food Safety in Catering — 2022 Level 2 Award in Health and Safety in the Workplace — 2022 Fire Marshal training — 2023 First Aid at Work (3-day) — 2024 COSHH Awareness — 2021
Additional
Systems: Tevalis EPOS, S4 Labour, brewery ordering portal Availability: full flexibility; live-in or live-out considered
Templates that suit this example
- Executive — Competency groups rather than a long skills list, which suits a CV led by GP, stock and licensing responsibility.
- Classic Gutter — Dates sit in a left gutter, so three or four pubs still fit on one page with room for the detail.
- Essential — Plain single column for a tenancy or pubco application where the form matters more than the design.
Want this structure with your own experience in it?
Build your pub manager CVWhy each section is written that way
Professional summary
- Why it matters.
- The reader is usually an area manager or a pub company recruitment team, and they want to know the shape of the pub you run before anything else: wet or food led, garden or not, team size, and whether you have held the licence.
- A strong version.
- Covers, the wet-to-food split, team size, DPS status, what sits on your number and the move you want to make. Four sentences at most.
- Common mistake.
- Writing "passionate publican who loves people and great beer". Every applicant could say it, and it uses the space where the size of the business should be.
Core skills
- Why it matters.
- A pub manager is judged on three things at once: the numbers, the cellar and the licence. If any one of the three is missing from your skills, a reader will assume you have not held it.
- A strong version.
- GP and stock vocabulary, cellar and line-cleaning routine, DPS and Challenge 25, the events you run, and the EPOS and rota systems you report from.
- Common mistake.
- Listing only service and people skills. They matter on a Saturday night, but a pub company hiring a manager is first checking that you can be handed a cellar and a licence.
Experience
- Why it matters.
- Two pub managers can do very different jobs: one runs a wet-led town pub with door staff, the other a food-led country pub with a garden and a Sunday roast queue. Say which, and what you owned in it.
- A strong version.
- Covers, wet-to-food split, team size, what you control on stock and GP, how you run the cellar, and the events that drive midweek trade. A target you worked to is more credible than a bare percentage.
- Common mistake.
- Headline percentages with nothing underneath them. "Reduced wastage by 40%" means little unless the reader can see what you changed in the cellar or at the bar to get there.
Licensing and compliance
- Why it matters.
- A Personal Licence is usually a condition of the job, and having been the named DPS is a separate thing from holding the certificate. Cellar, food safety and fire duties sit alongside it.
- A strong version.
- APLH and the year, DPS since when, the BIIAB cellar award, Level 3 food safety if the pub serves food, fire marshal and first aid. Mention a brewery quality visit or a licensing inspection you handled.
- Common mistake.
- Burying the Personal Licence on page two. For many pub roles it is the first thing a reader looks for, so it belongs in the summary and the certifications both.
Community and events
- Why it matters.
- Midweek trade is where a pub lives or dies, and the events calendar is often the manager’s own work. It also tells a reader whether you know the town.
- A strong version.
- A short list of what you actually ran and how often — quiz night, live music, fixtures, seasonal days — and what it did for the quiet sessions.
- Common mistake.
- Claiming attendance figures you cannot support, or listing one-off events as if they were a programme.
If your experience looks different
Most people are not the candidate in the example. Three common situations, and what to change for each.
First management role — moving up from bar supervisor
Your summary. Name the step openly: "Bar supervisor with three years behind the bar, holding a Personal Licence, looking for a first assistant manager role in a managed pub." The reader assesses you on what you have held, not on your title.
What to emphasise. Everything you already do that is a manager’s work — keyholding, cash-up, the cellar between visits, line cleans, stock counts, training starters, running a late shift as senior on site.
Bullets you could adapt
- ·Kept the cellar and the weekly line clean to the brewery standard across [X] hand pulls and [X] keg lines.
- ·Opened and closed as keyholder, set floats and reconciled [X] tills at the end of each shift.
- ·Ran Friday and Saturday late trading as senior on site, including the refusals log and dispersal at close.
Certifications. Personal Licence (APLH) first — it removes the most common reason a supervisor is passed over. The BIIAB cellar award is short and inexpensive and tells a pub company you can be trusted with the beer.
Experienced manager — going for a bigger site, a tenancy or multi-site
Your summary. Shift from running a shift to running a business. Lead with turnover band, the GP lines you own, retention of your team and any site you have turned around or reopened.
What to emphasise. Full P&L accountability, the brewery or pubco relationship, refurbishments or relaunches you led, covering other sites, and anyone you developed into assistant manager or above.
Bullets you could adapt
- ·Held accountability for the site P&L, presenting the weekly figures to the area manager with a variance explanation.
- ·Relaunched the food offer with the head chef, lifting the food share of sales from [X]% to [X]% over a year.
- ·Covered a second pub for [X] weeks during a vacancy, running both rotas and both cellars.
Certifications. Level 3 Food Safety if you do not already hold it, IOSH Managing Safely, and the pre-entry awareness course your pub company asks tenants to complete.
Moving into pub management from another industry
Your summary. Lead with the commercial spine — budgets, rotas, stock, a team, a licence if you have one — and say plainly what is new to you. A retail or leisure unit manager is closer to this job than either job title suggests.
What to emphasise. Budget or P&L responsibility, team size, rota writing, stock and shrinkage, any health and safety duty, and any experience of licensed trading or security at events.
Bullets you could adapt
- ·Managed a leisure venue with a team of [X], accountable for the wage budget and weekly stock results.
- ·Held the Personal Licence for a [X]-capacity events bar, including refusals, Challenge 25 and incident logs.
- ·Wrote rotas around trading patterns and adjusted staffing week to week against forecast.
Certifications. Personal Licence (APLH) and the BIIAB cellar award before you apply. Together they answer the two obvious objections to a career changer at this level.
Next steps
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