A restaurant busser clears and resets tables, keeps water and bread coming, and stocks the side stations so servers can stay with their guests. With a waitlist at the door, how fast the busser turns a finished table decides how long the next party stands there.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
Median pay, full-service restaurants · BLS, May 2025
We're hiring Bussers to keep our dining room clean and turning. You'll clear and reset tables quickly and quietly, keep water and bread going, support servers, and keep side stations and floors stocked and clean. A quick reset is the difference between a guest waiting at the door and a guest seated.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Clear plates and glassware as guests finish, without rushing anyone.
Reset tables to the house setup: crumbed, wiped, sanitized and set.
Refill water and bread, and bring extra plates, utensils and condiments.
Pre-set silverware for the next course.
Carry bus tubs to the dish pit and sort glass, silver and plates for the dishwasher.
Keep server stations, high chairs and the dining room floor clean and stocked.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Stock the side stations before service: ice, water pitchers, napkins, silverware and glassware.
Watch your section for finished plates and empty glasses.
Tell the host when a table is reset and ready.
Clean up spills and broken glass right away, and set out a wet-floor sign.
Do closing side work: polish silverware, restock, empty trash and sweep.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Table reset time: [your target].
Side stations stocked at shift start: [your target].
Closing side work completed: [your target].
Server feedback on support: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
No experience needed; we train you on the house setup and table numbers.
Food handler card, earned during training, where your state or county requires one.
Can carry full bus tubs safely through a crowded dining room.
If your state limits who may clear or carry alcoholic drinks, meet [the minimum age your state sets].
6. Preferred Experience
Previous busser, dishwasher or food runner experience.
Experience with busy dinner service or banquets.
Interest in moving up to food runner or server.
7. Physical Requirements
Walk and stand for a full shift, carrying bus tubs up to [30] pounds.
Bend, reach and wipe tables throughout the shift.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
Evening and weekend shifts, plus holidays.
Dining room and dish area with hot water, sanitizer and wet floors.
Shifts of [four to eight] hours, with early cuts when it's slow.
9. Compensation and Benefits
Pay: [range and hourly or salary basis].
Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when they start].
10. Company Culture and Overview
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, the area you serve, and the support a new busser gets in the first 90 days.]
11. How to Apply
[Apply link or email]. Our process: [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
Need help filling this role? HireBus posts the ad, Iris interviews every applicant by phone before you do, and you decide who to hire. Start hiring now
What's different about bussing in a full-service restaurant
Clearing tables is part of many restaurant jobs. Where guests order by course, tables carry linens and a waitlist builds at the door, the busser is the one who turns a finished table into a seated one.
Clearing without rushing the table
Full-service guests linger. The busser clears empty plates and glasses as each course ends, crumbs the table before dessert and sets fresh silverware for the next course, all without making anyone feel hurried. Once the party stands up, the reset starts: clear, wipe, sanitize, set, and tell the host the table is ready.
The wiping cloth lives in sanitizer
State food codes drawn from the FDA's model code even cover the towels bussers carry. Minnesota's, for one, requires wet cloths used on counters and equipment to sit in sanitizer solution between uses and be laundered daily, and limits the dry cloths used for spills on tableware during service to that one job. A sanitizer bucket at each side station, changed as soon as it shows food or dirt, keeps a busser from wiping tables with a dirty rag. Source: Minnesota Rules 4626.0285: Wiping cloths, use limitation.
Broken glass and spills come first
Dropped glasses, ice near the bar and spilled drinks happen every dinner rush. OSHA's young worker guide for restaurants tells staff to sweep broken glass with a broom and dustpan, never by hand, and to wipe up spills and fallen ice right away. It also flags lifting overfilled tubs of dirty dishes as a strain risk. A wet-floor sign stays out until the floor is dry. Source: OSHA Young Worker Safety in Restaurants eTool: Serving.
Sorting at the dish pit
A busser who dumps a full tub in the dish pit slows the dishwasher down. Glasses go in glass racks, silverware into the soak, plates scraped and stacked, linens in the bin. When the pit backs up on a Saturday, bussers who sort as they drop keep clean glasses and plates coming back to the floor.
Bussers share in the tips
DOL names bussers among the workers who customarily and regularly receive tips. That means they can join a tip pool with servers even when the employer pays a tipped cash wage and claims a tip credit. The pool can't include managers or supervisors, and the employer can't keep any part of it. Write down how the pool or tip-out is split and show it to every new busser. Source: U.S. Department of Labor: Fact Sheet #15, Tipped employees under the FLSA.
How much restaurant bussers make
The closest BLS group for restaurant bussers is dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers. Dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers who work for full-service restaurants earned a median of $15.89 an hour ($33,040 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about the same as the $33,980 median for dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers in all industries. About 326,970 of the 542,750 dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers in that survey work for full-service restaurants.
Usually an hourly wage plus tips, either a cut of each server's tips at the end of the night or a share of the house pool. BLS includes tips in these wage figures, so set a candidate's hourly rate plus tips beside them, not the hourly rate alone.
Full-service restaurants
$33,040$33,040 median Middle half $27,060–$36,810 10th–90th $18,500–$46,360
All industries
$33,980$33,980 median Middle half $28,330–$37,250 10th–90th $21,300–$46,570
$10k$20k$30k$40k$50k$60k
10th–90th percentileMiddle halfMedianAnnual pay, May 2025. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Annual pay by percentile
Group
10th
25th
Median
75th
90th
Full-service restaurants
$18,500
$27,060
$33,040
$36,810
$46,360
All industries
$21,300
$28,330
$33,980
$37,250
$46,570
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Spots an empty glass or a finished plate without being told
Gets a loaded bus tub past chairs and guests without a bump
Works quietly around tables that are still mid-conversation
Flags each reset table to the host right away
Pitches in on the server's tables when a section gets slammed
Teach these on the job
Your table numbers and the house table setup
Crumbing, changing linens and setting silverware by course
Sanitizer bucket and wiping cloth rules
Your broken glass and spill steps
How your dish pit wants the tubs sorted
Bussers work with bus tubs, sanitizer buckets and cloths, crumbers, and the linens, glassware and silverware stocked at each side station. Some restaurants let bussers mark a table clean on a handheld or the host's tablet, which saves a walk to the stand on a full night.
Restaurant busser interview questions
They have their own page: 6 questions that test this job, what strong and weak answers sound like, and a work exercise to run with your finalists.
The template leaves the targets open. Clock a month of resets on busy and slow nights, and check how often the station and closing lists pass, before you pick numbers.
Table reset time
Minutes from the party leaving to the host hearing the table is ready. Spot-check with a stopwatch on busy nights, or use table status times if your reservation system logs them.
Side stations stocked at shift start
A manager walks each station before doors open and checks it against the par list: ice, water pitchers, napkins, silverware and glassware. Mark pass or miss on the pre-shift sheet.
Closing side work completed
The closing manager signs each busser's checklist before they clock out. Count unsigned or failed lists by person each week.
Server feedback on support
Ask servers as they cash out, or in a short weekly survey, whether their bussers kept up. Look for patterns by busser and section rather than one rough night.
Career path
BusserClears, resets and learns how the dining room flows.
Food runnerDelivers plates by seat number and learns the menu.
ServerGets a section after passing menu and allergen tests.
BartenderSome servers move behind the bar after barback shifts.
What's the difference between a busser and a food runner?
A busser looks after the table before and after the food: water, bread, clearing and resetting. A food runner brings the finished plates out and sets each one at the right seat. Many restaurants combine the two on slower shifts. If you do, train both halves, since running food also means knowing the menu, the seat numbers and the allergy steps.
How much does a restaurant busser make?
Dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers who work for full-service restaurants earned a median of $15.89 an hour ($33,040 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $27,060 and $36,810 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and overtime.
Does the tip credit apply to bussers?
Under federal law it can, since bussers are a tipped job. States don't all allow it, though. DOL's state-by-state table shows where tipped staff must get the whole state minimum in cash with no tip credit, and where the state sets its own cash wage above the federal one. Find your state's row before you write the offer, and recheck it each year, since some states change their rates annually.
How young can a busser be?
Fourteen is the federal floor, with limits. Under federal rules, 14- and 15-year-olds can work in a restaurant only outside school hours, within daily and weekly caps, and never past 7 p.m. except in the summer stretch from June 1 to Labor Day, when the cutoff is 9 p.m. That rules out most closing shifts. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds have no federal hour caps. Where your state's rule is stricter, it applies. Clearing drinks is a separate question: New York's liquor authority, for one, allows a minor in a licensed restaurant to handle empty alcohol containers, as bussers do, if a person aged 21 or up directly supervises them.
What does good busser training look like?
Start with a shadow shift beside your best busser: table numbers, the house setup and where everything lives at the side stations. Then give them a small section for a few shifts before a full one. Quiz them on the reset steps and the sanitizer rules, and ask the servers they supported how it went before the new busser works a Saturday alone.
