From hospitality to remote work: a realistic path

Yes, you can move from hospitality to remote work, and the most realistic first steps are customer support, appointment setting, remote closing or virtual admin. Your floor skills (reading a table, upselling without being pushy, staying calm when the kitchen is on fire) transfer straight into sales. The honest trade-off: no tips, often commission, and a screen all day, so most people switch gradually while still working rosters. She Sells trains women in Australia and the US in appointment setting and closing, and its career program helps graduates land a role.

The realistic remote options compared

Not every remote job is a good fit for someone coming off the floor. Here’s how the four most common routes stack up for waitstaff, bar staff, café crew and hotel front desk workers.

Remote role	Entry difficulty	How pay is usually structured	Flexibility	Best for
Customer support (chat, email, phone)	Low to medium: lots of roles, lots of applicants	Usually hourly or salaried, rarely commission	Often fixed shifts, sometimes nights and weekends	Front desk staff who like solving problems and want steady pay
Appointment setter	Medium: trainable, but you need to handle rejection	Hourly, base plus bonus, or commission-heavy, depending on the employer	Often part-time and split shifts, good for evenings	Waitstaff and bar staff who can chat to anyone
Remote closer	Medium to high: usually needs setting or sales practice first	Commonly commission-heavy or commission-only	Calendar-based, often flexible once you’re established	People who loved upselling and want uncapped earning potential
Virtual admin / virtual assistant	Low to medium: tool skills matter more than sales	Hourly, often contract	Usually flexible hours, task-based	Organised duty managers and front office staff

If you want the widest view of entry-level options first, our guide to remote sales jobs with no experience walks through what hiring managers actually look for.

The pay numbers, side by side

Here’s what public data showed when we checked in October 2026. Every figure varies by employer, hours, location and pay structure, so treat them as a rough map, not a forecast. AU figures are in AUD and US figures are in USD.

Role and market	What the data shows	Source
Hospitality, Australia (AUD)	Level 2 minimum (food and beverage attendant grade 2, front office grade 1) is $27.08 an hour for adults from 1 July 2026, with a 25% loading on top for casuals; many venues pay above the award	Hospitality Industry (General) Award
Waiters and waitresses, US (USD)	Median $16.94 an hour in May 2025, including tips; lowest 10% under $8.70, highest 10% over $31.12	US Bureau of Labor Statistics
Appointment setter, Australia (AUD)	Typical $65,000 to $85,000 a year, based on full-time salary ranges disclosed in job ads	SEEK
Appointment setter, US (USD)	Median $16.08 an hour (10th to 90th percentile $12.74 to $20.85); total pay $28,000 to $47,000 a year, from 76 self-reported profiles	Payscale

Read those carefully. SEEK only counts full-time ads that disclose a salary, so commission-only and casual setter work is mostly invisible there. Payscale is self-reported. And US hospitality pay leans hard on tips, which is why the BLS spread is so wide. The point isn’t that one job pays more. It’s that remote setting can land in a similar zone to floor work, and the upside depends on your pay structure and your skill.

What She Sells offers here

She Sells is a remote sales program with a team in Australia and the US. “She Launches” is the foundation: live coaching, role play and frameworks for setting and closing (it doesn’t include direct placement). “She Soars” is the career program through the She Sells “Cert III in Remote Sales” certificate: once you’re certified, our recruitment team works with you to land a role within 90 days, or your money back. See our programs for details.

Why hospitality skills transfer to sales

People underestimate hospitality experience on a résumé (CV in Australia). Sales managers don’t. Here’s what carries over:

• Reading people fast. You can tell within ten seconds whether a table wants chat or wants to be left alone. On a sales call, that’s the skill of knowing when to dig deeper and when to move on.
• Upselling without being sleazy. “Would you like to try the shiraz with that?” is a recommendation based on what someone already told you. That’s consultative selling in miniature.
• Working at pace. A Friday night service with six tables and a bar backed up teaches you to prioritise. Setters often juggle a full calendar, follow-ups and messages at once.
• Calm under pressure. You’ve handled the guest who’s furious about a cold steak. A prospect saying “it’s too expensive” is a lot less scary after that.
• Thick skin. Rejection on a sales call is just a table that didn’t want dessert. You don’t take it personally, and that’s half the battle.

What doesn’t transfer automatically is the structure of a sales conversation: opening, discovery questions, handling objections and asking for the decision. That part is learnable, and it’s exactly what role play is for.

The honest differences nobody mentions

Remote work isn’t a holiday from hard work. It’s a different kind of hard. Here’s what changes:

• No tips, no cash at the end of the night. If you’re used to walking out with tips, a fortnightly or monthly pay cycle feels slow. Commission can take weeks to show up while you build a pipeline.
• Commission is real. Many remote sales roles are commission-heavy or commission-only. In Australia, Fair Work says employees can only be paid commission-only when an award or enterprise agreement allows it, and award-free employees still need at least the National Minimum Wage. Contractors are a different story, so read every offer carefully. In the US, plenty of remote sales roles are offered as independent contractor (1099) work, so check whether you’re being hired as an employee or a contractor.
• Screens all day. You’ll swap walking 15,000 steps a shift for sitting at a desk. Build in movement or your body will tell you about it.
• Self-discipline replaces the roster. Nobody’s telling you to start prep at 4pm. You have to show up to your own calendar, and that’s harder than it sounds.
• It can feel lonely. No team banter at knock-off. Find a community early so you’ve got people to debrief with.

I’ll be honest about my own start. I came into remote sales in 2020 after years of other work, and I made $440 in my first month, which is not typical and not a benchmark, just the truth. It took practice to get better.

A plan to switch around your rosters

You don’t need to quit on Monday. Most people make the move in stages while still picking up shifts.

Stage	What to do	Fits around
1. Pick a lane (week 1)	Choose setting, closing, support or admin based on the comparison table above	A day off
2. Learn the basics (weeks 1 to 6)	Study call structure, practise role play, record yourself and listen back	Mornings before a dinner shift, or days off
3. Rewrite your résumé (week 3 or so)	Translate floor wins into sales language: upsells, regulars you built, complaints you turned around	One quiet afternoon
4. Start applying (from week 4)	Target part-time and evening setter roles first so you can keep a few shifts	Between shifts
5. Run both for a while	Drop shifts only once remote income is steady enough to cover your bills	Your new calendar

Timelines vary a lot depending on your hours and how much you practise. If your days are full and nights are free, check out these evening work from home jobs. And if you’re worried you don’t have the paperwork, this guide to work from home jobs that don’t need a degree is a good reality check.

Red flags to watch for

Hospitality workers get targeted by dodgy “remote opportunities” all the time, usually via social media. Walk away if you see:

• Pay-to-join. The FTC is clear that honest employers will never ask you to pay to get a job.
• Recruit-to-earn. If your income comes from signing up friends rather than selling a real product to real customers, that’s MLM territory. I started in network marketing back in 2014, so I know how appealing it can sound.
• Big money, little work. The FTC says a job claiming you can make a lot of money in a short period with little work is almost certainly a scam.
• No written terms. No contract, no commission rate in writing, no clarity on whether you’re an employee or contractor.
• Pressure to decide tonight. A real employer gives you time to read the offer.

Paying for training is different from paying for a job, but ask the same hard questions of any course: what exactly is included, what support is there, and what are the written terms.

Frequently asked questions

Can I get a remote job with only hospitality experience?

Yes, especially in customer support and appointment setting, where communication and people skills matter more than formal qualifications. Frame your experience in sales language, such as upselling, regulars you built and complaints you resolved. Practising sales calls before you apply makes a big difference.

Will I earn more in remote sales than in hospitality?

Not automatically. Public data shows appointment setter pay sits in a similar zone to hospitality pay at entry level, and commission-heavy roles can pay less while you’re learning. Earnings depend on the role, the pay structure and your skill, and they vary a lot.

Can I keep working shifts while I switch?

Most people do. Part-time and evening setter roles fit around rosters, and you can drop shifts gradually once remote income is steady. Just watch out for burnout from doing both for too long.

Is commission-only work legal?

In Australia, Fair Work says employees can only be paid commission-only when an award or enterprise agreement allows it, and contractors are treated differently. In the US, many remote sales roles are independent contractor positions. Always get the pay terms in writing before you start.

Which is easier to start: setting or closing?

Setting is usually the easier entry point because the calls are shorter and the job is booking qualified people, not taking payment. Many closers start as setters, then move up once they’ve built confidence on the phone.

Results vary. Nothing here is a promise of income. See our earnings disclaimer.

Keep reading

• What does a DM setter do?
• Side hustles that aren’t MLM: how to tell the difference
• How to make a second income from home without a second job
• Work from home jobs that don’t need a degree