You run multiple restaurants. Maybe a handful of franchise units. Maybe a few dozen company stores across a region. Either way, the same problem keeps hitting you. You cannot keep good shift leads. Your assistant managers burn out or leave. And every open general manager slot costs you sales, food waste, and turnover you can measure on the P&L.

Veterans solve a lot of that. Not because of a bumper sticker. Because the job they did in uniform looks a lot like the job you are trying to fill.

A junior NCO ran a shift under pressure. They trained new people. They counted inventory and signed for it. They hit a standard every single time, with a line of customers or a chain of command watching. That is a shift lead. That is an assistant manager. With a few more years on them, that is a multi-unit operator.

This guide is for food service chains and quick-service restaurant operators who want to hire veterans for shift-lead, assistant-manager, GM, and area-manager roles. It covers which military backgrounds map to which jobs, how to read a military resume without getting lost, and where to find these people. It is written for a midsize operator, not a Fortune 500 with a national veteran program. You do not need a big budget. You need to know what to look for.

BMR runs the candidate side of this. This is the broader version of our hospitality and food service hiring guide, zoomed in on chains and QSR specifically.

Why Are Veterans a Strong Fit for QSR and Chain Operations?

Quick service is a high-volume, high-stress, standards-driven business. The rush hits. The line backs up. Someone calls out. A piece of equipment dies. The job is staying calm and keeping the unit running anyway.

That is the exact environment a service member spent years in. The military runs on standards, checklists, and repeatable process. It runs on people who can lead a small team through a bad shift without losing their head. That skill set does not expire when the uniform comes off.

There is also a retention angle that matters more in this industry than almost any other. QSR turnover is brutal. Veterans tend to value structure, clear expectations, and a path up. When you give them that, they stay. A shift lead who stays two years instead of four months changes your store economics.

The labor market backs this up too. Veteran unemployment was 3.5% across all veterans in 2025, lower than the national rate. These are people who want to work and who hire in at a discount to their actual capability, because most operators do not know how to read what they bring.

Which Military Jobs Map to Restaurant Roles?

You do not need to memorize military job codes. But it helps to know the few that translate almost one-to-one. Three buckets matter for chain and QSR hiring: food service, logistics, and junior leadership.

Food Service and Culinary Roles

These are the closest match. A military cook ran a kitchen that fed hundreds or thousands of people a day, on a budget, to a standard, every day. They know food safety. They know prep, line speed, and waste control. They have managed a kitchen team.

Watch for these backgrounds:

• Army 92G (Culinary Specialist): Ran dining facilities and field kitchens. Food prep at scale, sanitation, ration accountability.
• Navy CS (Culinary Specialist): Fed crews aboard ships. Tight space, tight timeline, zero room for error.
• Marine Corps Food Service (MOS 3381): Field and garrison food operations under the same volume pressure.
• Air Force Services (Sustainment Services): Dining operations and food management on installations.

A culinary specialist with a few years of leadership can step into a kitchen manager or assistant GM role with very little ramp. They already speak food safety and line management. Your job is just to teach them your menu and your POS.

Logistics and Supply Roles

An assistant manager in a restaurant spends a big chunk of the week on things that are not cooking. Ordering. Receiving. Inventory counts. Vendor problems. Cost control. That is logistics.

A military supply or logistics noncommissioned officer did all of that with real accountability. They signed for equipment worth more than your whole store. They tracked it, ordered it, and answered for any shortage. Put that person on your food and paper ordering and your variance tightens up fast.

Backgrounds to look for include Army 92Y (Unit Supply Specialist), Army 92A (Automated Logistical Specialist), Navy Logistics Specialist, and Marine Corps supply roles. These people manage stock and money as a daily habit.

Junior Leadership (Any Branch, Any Job)

This is the one most operators miss. The specific military job matters less than the leadership level. A corporal, a sergeant, a petty officer. These are first-line leaders. They ran a team of four to a dozen people every day, no matter what their technical specialty was.

A combat arms infantry sergeant may never have touched a fryer. But they led people through worse pressure than a Friday dinner rush, and they owned the result. Do not screen them out because their job title sounds nothing like food. The leadership is the transferable part.

How Do You Read a Veteran's Resume Without Getting Lost?

This is where most operators give up. The resume is full of acronyms and job codes that read like a foreign language if you have never served. So the resume gets passed over, even when the person is a great fit.

The fix is to translate, not skip. The military experience is real. It just needs decoding. Here is the trick. Ignore the job code. Read the verbs and the numbers.

A few things to look for as you read:

• Team size: How many people did they lead? "Supervised 8 soldiers" is a shift lead. "Led 40" is a GM or area-manager candidate.
• Volume: "Fed 800 daily" or "supported 1,200 meals per day" tells you they can handle your rush.
• Money: Any dollar figure for inventory, equipment, or budget shows cost accountability.
• Standards: Words like food safety, sanitation, inspection, or audit mean they already work to a code.

One note on screening software. Your applicant tracking system ranks resumes by keyword match. It does not throw veteran resumes out. But if your job post is full of restaurant jargon and the veteran wrote in military terms, their resume ranks low and sinks down the pile. So you never see it. The fix is to actually look at applicants from military backgrounds instead of trusting the rank order, and to write your job posts in plain language.

If you want a deeper walkthrough, we wrote a full guide on how to evaluate a veteran resume and one on reading a military job title on a resume.

How Does Military Rank Map to Your Org Chart?

Rank is a fast shortcut for leadership level. It is not perfect, but it gets you in the right ballpark for which role fits.

A senior NCO managed people, training, equipment, and money across several teams at once. That is the core of a multi-unit job. They are used to holding a standard across locations they cannot see at every moment. That is exactly what a district or area manager does in a chain.

If you are filling a GM role and a separating senior NCO applies, take that meeting. They may have run an operation bigger than three of your stores combined.

Where Do You Find These Candidates?

Knowing the fit is half of it. The other half is getting in front of people while they are looking. You have a few channels, and a midsize operator can run all of them cheaply.

SkillBridge deserves a closer look for chains. It lets a service member intern with your company in their last few months of service. The military keeps paying their salary during that window. You get to watch a candidate run real shifts before you commit to anything. For a high-turnover business, a working tryout that costs you almost nothing in wages is hard to beat. You can read more at the official SkillBridge program site.

It helps to understand the channels veterans use to find you. The Department of Labor's hiring resources for employers lay out programs and tax considerations worth a look. One note on any hiring tax credit: the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which has covered some veteran hires in the past, expired at the end of 2025 and is not available for 2026 hires unless Congress renews it. Treat this as general information, not legal or tax advice, and confirm the current status with your accountant.

For the VSO route, we put together a full veteran service organizations hiring channel guide that breaks down which groups to reach out to.

How Do You Keep a Veteran Hire Once You Have Them?

Hiring is the easy part. Keeping them is where the real return shows up. In QSR, a hire who lasts is worth far more than a hire who quits at month three.

Veterans stay when the job feels like a place that respects what they bring. A few things move the needle.

• Give a clear path. Tell them what shift lead to assistant manager to GM looks like, with timelines. Veterans are used to a rank structure with steps. Show them yours.
• Set clear standards. They thrive on a known bar. Tell them exactly what good looks like and hold them to it. Vague expectations frustrate them more than hard ones.
• Brief the manager first. Make sure whoever they report to knows how to work with a veteran hire. A manager who reads the resume right gets a much better first 90 days.

That last point matters more than people think. We wrote a guide on onboarding veteran employees with a 90-day plan and one on training your managers to retain veteran hires. Both are built for operators with limited time.

What Is the Fastest Way to Start?

You do not need a national program or a recruiting team to hire veterans for your chain. You need three things. A clear picture of which backgrounds fit which roles. The ability to read a military resume for what it actually shows. And a way to get in front of these candidates while they are searching.

BMR runs the candidate side of that. Transitioning service members and veterans build profiles and resumes on the platform every day, with over 1,000 new profiles added every month and more than 60,000 resumes built to date. That is a fresh, growing pool of people whose experience maps to shift lead, kitchen manager, assistant manager, and GM roles, refreshed constantly.

For a midsize chain operator, the math is simple. You have constant openings and high turnover. This is a candidate group that hires in at strong value, stays longer when treated right, and already knows how to run a shift to a standard. The only barrier is knowing how to spot them, and now you do.

When you are ready to get in front of this talent pool, reach out to access BMR's veteran candidates. We will help you connect your open roles to people who already do this work.