Salaries / Waiter / Server
Food Service · SOC 35-3031
Waiter / Server salary
Waiters and waitresses take orders and serve food and drinks to guests in restaurants and other dining settings.
Ohio · 2025
Median annual (OH)
$36,700
Median hourly (OH)
$17.65
Typical range (OH)
$23,820 to $63,740
Ohio source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS 2025.
National
Median annual
$35,230
Median hourly
$16.94
Typical range
$18,100 to $64,720
Much of a server's income is tips, so reported wages understate real take-home in many places.
National source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS 2025. Figures are gross pay and vary by location, employer, and experience.
The pay range, visually.
Low end (about the 10th percentile), median, and high end (about the 90th percentile).
By state, at a glance
These at-a-glance figures are estimates derived from the national median and a state wage index, shown to give a rough sense of local differences. Pick any state (here or in the selector above) to look up its real figures.
Your skills are a business
Ideas we have for people in food service.
The same experience that earns a paycheck as a waiter / server can start a business. Here are real ideas from our marketplace that fit this field.
Start an Abula Restaurant or Yoruba Food Business
Serve abula, the beloved Yoruba combination of amala with ewedu and gbegiri soups and stew, to a Nigerian diaspora that craves the taste of home and a wider food scene hungry for authentic West African cooking. Start with delivery, pop-ups, and catering before any storefront.
Start a Catering Business
Cook for weddings, corporate events, and parties, where one booked event can be worth more than a week of restaurant covers.
Start an Outage Crew Catering and Site Logistics Business
Feed and support the temporary armies of craft workers who descend on power plants and industrial sites during maintenance outages, serving contract meals from mobile kitchens where the nearest restaurant is thirty minutes away.
Start a Microgreens Farm
Grow microgreens on racks in a spare room or garage and sell weekly to restaurants, farmers markets, and subscription customers.
You could hire waiter / servers, not just be one.
We have a staffing calculator to price the work and a full course on how to start a staffing agency, so you can turn a field you already know into a business that puts other people to work.