Job Check
Cooks, Short Order
Prepare and cook to order a variety of foods that require only a short preparation time. May take orders from customers and serve patrons at counters or tables.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Clean food preparation equipment, work areas, and counters or tables.Mostly human for now
- 02Restock kitchen supplies, rotate food, and stamp the time and date on food in coolers.Mostly human for now
- 03Complete orders from steam tables, placing food on plates and serving customers at tables or counters.Mostly human for now
- 04Plan work on orders so that items served together are finished at the same time.Mostly human for now
- 05Grill, cook, and fry foods such as french fries, eggs, and pancakes.Mostly human for now
- 06Perform food preparation tasks, such as making sandwiches, carving meats, making soups or salads, baking breads or desserts, and brewing coffee or tea.Mostly human for now
- 07Perform general cleaning activities in kitchen and dining areas.Mostly human for now
- 08Take orders from customers and cook foods requiring short preparation times, according to customer requirements.Mostly human for now
- 09Grill and garnish hamburgers or other meats, such as steaks and chops.Mostly human for now
- 10Order supplies and stock them on shelves.Mostly human for now
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
0%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 47% 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 92% 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.
- Clean food preparation equipment, work areas, and counters or tables.
- Grill and garnish hamburgers or other meats, such as steaks and chops.
- Restock kitchen supplies, rotate food, and stamp the time and date on food in coolers.