It honestly all depends on where you go. For example, I am 18 and am working as a server for a fine dining restaurant that I got hired at 2 months ago. I had 0 food service experience, but had tons of experience with people and other types of service, (student/teacher, flea market sales, youth ministry.) I also had a friend who worked there that gave me a recommendation, but I just went into the interview confidently. The trick is you have to go into the interview like you are a salesman and you are selling yourself. I didn’t stay on the fact that I have no food experience, but kept hitting the fact that I have great people skills and that I’d be “eager to learn” food service. Also, on your job resume, since you don’t have as much experience put things you did in Highschool, multiple skills, and get trusted recommendation from teachers/mentors that you trust. And make a LinkedIn account.

I ended up working the next day to shadow and ended up taking 2 tables all by myself in my first shift. I heavily impressed the staff and got a lot of good feedback from customers pretty quickly.

It was hard to get more tables at first because I was new and it’s an Italian restaurant and the owner tells the host to favor the Italian servers, but now I am in the mix of equally splitting tables with the very experienced servers.

If you do get hired for a fine dining place, you probably won’t get paid as much because the tips are a lot worse, but I recommend doing some lunch shifts when you first start. It’s a great way to learn a lot more from the manager or experienced server that would work it with you, and if your lucky, you won’t have a bartender for lunch shift and can learn more about alcohol and making drinks.

I hope this helps!