New Zealand Certificate in Food and Beverage Service

Graduates will be equipped with the knowledge and skills to serve food and beverage, apply and maintain health and safety, food safety and security practices to ensure safety, communicate effectively when serving customers and behave in a professional manner with colleagues, managers and customers and follow standard operating procedures in cafés and restaurants or in a functions team. 

Graduates will gain the skills to work in cafes, restaurants, function centres and licenced premises in an entry level position, or move onto further training in the hospitality industry.

Further study options

Graduates of this programmes can progress to more advanced programmes in Hospitality such as:

• New Zealand Certificate in Cookery (Level 3)
• New Zealand Diploma in Hospitality Management (Level 5)

Entry into the New Zealand Certificate in Food and Beverage Service, will be granted to applicants who:

• Are a minimum of 16 years of age, with preferably four years of secondary education, or
• If over 20 and not able to satisfy the academic requirement above, be able to demonstrate interest in the industry and the potential to succeed
• Have competence in English and can demonstrate adequate literacy and/or numeracy skills to enable them to meet all academic and health and safety requirements of the course in which they enrol
• All applicants should demonstrate a keen interest in hospitality, for example, in the preparation and service of food and beverages in a café and bar environment and academic attributes (for example, write grammatically correct and suitably structured paragraphs, understand and summarise written text and present information orally) which demonstrate that applicants have a reasonable likelihood of successful completion of the programme

All enrolments in the New Zealand Certificate in Food and Beverage Service are approved at the discretion of the programme manager in consultation with the head of faculty and teaching staff, as required.

English Language Requirements

Applicants, whose first language is not English, or who come from a country where the language of instruction in schools is not English, are required to provide evidence of having achieved one of the following:

NCEA Level 3 with University Entrance, or

an International Baccalaureate Diploma or Cambridge A- level qualification for which the teaching and assessment was conducted in English; or

Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (CELTA), or Trinity College London Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (CertTESOL); or

Successful completion of all primary education (being the equivalent of New Zealand primary school years 1 to 8) and at least three years of secondary education (being the equivalent of three years from New Zealand secondary school years 9 to 13) at schools in  either New Zealand, Australia­, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States one of the countries listed in Rule 18.5 where the student was taught using English as the language of instruction; or

Successful completion of at least five years of secondary education (being the equivalent of New Zealand secondary school years 9 to 13) at schools in either New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States where the student was taught using English as the language of instruction; or

Successful completion of a Bachelor ‘s Degree, Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma, Bachelor Honours degree, Postgraduate Certificate, Postgraduate Diploma, Masters’ Degree or Doctoral Degree, the language of instruction of which must be in English and which must be  from a tertiary education provider from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the United Kingdom or the United States or

Successful completion of one of the following internationally recognised proficiency tests listed below to the level required of the programme of study and with all scores achieved in a single test during the two years preceding the proposed date of enrolment.

Certificate at Level 3

• IELTS test - General or Academic score of 5 with no band score lower than 5
• TOEFL Paper based test (pBT) - Score of 500 (with an essay score of 4 TWE)
• TOEFL Internet based test (iBT) - Score of 35 (with a writing score of 14)
• Cambridge English Examination – B2 First or B2 First for schools with a score of 154. No less than 154 in each skill.
• OET - Minimum of Grade C or 200 in all sub-tests
• NZCEL - a) Expiring Level   b) Current: Level 3 (General) or (Workplace) b) Level 3 (General)
• Pearson Test of English (Academic) – PTE (Academic) score of 36 with no band score lower than 36
• Language Cert - B1 Achiever International ESOL Written (LRW) PASS with no less than 25/50 in each skill and Spoken (S) PASS
• Trinity ISE - ISE I with no less than distinction in any band

For students to be considered to have satisfactorily completed this programme, and be eligible for award of the qualification “New Zealand Certificate in Food and Beverage Service (Level 3)”, they must have:

• Completed all scheduled course work requirements and assessments
• Successfully completed assessment requirements for all unit standards and/or local units, and achieved a total of 60 credits.

(Please note: students failing to engage for 80% of timetabled programme hours will forfeit Zero Fees entitlement.)

Classes are held Monday to Saturday, 9.00am-5.00pm at SIT's Invercargill campus.