Job Check
Chefs and Head Cooks
Direct and may participate in the preparation, seasoning, and cooking of salads, soups, fish, meats, vegetables, desserts, or other foods. May plan and price menu items, order supplies, and keep records and accounts.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Monitor sanitation practices to ensure that employees follow standards and regulations.Mostly human for now
- 02Instruct cooks or other workers in the preparation, cooking, garnishing, or presentation of food.Mostly human for now
- 03Supervise or coordinate activities of cooks or workers engaged in food preparation.Mostly human for now
- 04Order or requisition food or other supplies needed to ensure efficient operation.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 05Inspect supplies, equipment, or work areas to ensure conformance to established standards.Mostly human for now
- 06Check the quantity and quality of received products.Mostly human for now
- 07Check the quality of raw or cooked food products to ensure that standards are met.Mostly human for now
- 08Estimate amounts and costs of required supplies, such as food and ingredients.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 09Coordinate planning, budgeting, or purchasing for all the food operations within establishments such as clubs, hotels, or restaurant chains.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 10Analyze recipes to assign prices to menu items, based on food, labor, and overhead costs.AI could speed this up a lot
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job lossToo little dataNot enough work use was seen to measure. This does not mean the job is safe from AI.Anthropic, 2026
26%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 51% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 43% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
The main tasks with no real AI use seen and no big speed-up expected. This is where your skill counts most today.
- Monitor sanitation practices to ensure that employees follow standards and regulations.
- Instruct cooks or other workers in the preparation, cooking, garnishing, or presentation of food.
- Supervise or coordinate activities of cooks or workers engaged in food preparation.