OP’s post also says a lot about how different the restaurant industry is right now. Before the pandemic, it was unlikely a restaurant would hire somebody with no management experience, regardless of what they wanted to be paid. You couldn’t even go somewhere and offer to take less for them to take a chance on you if you had no experience.

The way that you would break into management is to prove your worth someplace that was willing to spend the money to promote you. Training a restaurant manager is time-consuming and expensive, so the chances were pretty low that someone was going to blindly invest in you just because you were a server at Olive Garden.

Right now though they are pretty desperate to fill spots, so restaurants have lowered their standards and upped their pay.

Catering of course has always been different though. Being a manager for a catering company is not at all like managing a restaurant. For instance, One of the main differences is that it’s not like you have to close out all the server’s banks and the cash registers at the end of the catering job, because the company has already been paid upfront for the services. You have to have a lot of trust in your restaurant managers because they handle a lot of your money.

And of course managers for restaurants are pretty much married to their job, working ridiculous hours, and at least have to be available by phone pretty much all the time. Caterers show up and set up, serve for about four hours, then break down. Instead of working too many hours, the problem with catering is typically that you don’t get enough work to make a living.

The really useful thing about getting a management position for a catering service, is that you might be able to fudge that experience on your résumé if you want to move to an actual restaurant.