The restaurant sector is a highly competitive industry, and factors affecting restaurant performance
such as management competencies need to be explored. In order to determine the skills and
knowledge needed to be a successful manager, management competencies should be addressed.
Employees’ and managers’ perceptions of which management competencies are important could
differ. The aim of this paper is to describe the perceptions of employees and managers of Pretoria
restaurants with respect to technical competencies. A structured questionnaire was used to collect
data from 47 restaurants in Pretoria. A six-point Likert scale was used to determine the perceptions
regarding technical skills. A total of 49 restaurant managers and 131 employees completed the
questionnaire. Employees perceived food preparation skills as the most important technical
competency to possess in the restaurant sector, while managers identified the knowledge of operating
kitchen equipment as an always-important technical competency
