Service and sales workers · code 5212
Street food salespersons
An app can take the order. Cooking in a crowd at lunchtime is still all you.
Selling food and drink and getting a licence are mostly out of AI's reach. Buying stock and pushing or carrying it to where it's sold it barely touches.
What they actually do (and what else they get called)
Street food salespersons prepare and sell, or sell previously prepared hot or cold foods and beverages ready for immediate consumption in streets and public places such as stations, cinemas or theatres. Tasks include - (a) obtaining permission or a licence, where required, to sell food and drinks on the street or in a public place; (b) obtaining food and drinks for sale; (c) preparing, either beforehand or on the spot, food and drinks for sale; (d) loading and unloading, pushing, pedalling or carrying handcarts, trucks, trays or baskets to bring food and drinks to the desired place in the street, or to public places such as stations or cinemas; (e) displaying and selling food and drinks and accepting payment. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Hawker (food) - Street food vendor Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Cook - 5120 - Food service counter attendant - 5246 - Fast food preparer - 9411 - Street vendor (excluding food) - 9520 Notes Vendors from street and market stalls of fresh food products not intended for immediate consumption (such as fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products) are classified in Unit Group 5211: Stall and Market Salespersons. Vendors from street and market stalls of a variety of prepared meals and food items for immediate consumption are classified in Unit Group 5246: Food Service Counter Attendants. Vendors in streets and public places of food and beverages for immediate consumption from pushcarts, trucks, trays or baskets are classified in Unit Group 5212: Street Food Salespersons. Vendors in streets and public places of non-food items (or of pre-packaged non-perishable food items such as confectionery) from pushcarts, trucks, trays or baskets are classified in Unit Group 9520: Street Vendors (excluding Food). Workers who prepare simple food items for immediate consumption, such as hamburger cooks, but have limited direct contact with clients, are classified in Unit Group 9411: Fast Food Preparers. If adapting these categories to national circumstances please note that the aim of separately identifying vendors of food items for immediate consumption is to ensure that jobs that require skills in service, basic preparation and hygienic handling of food are identified. Food service counter attendants generally serve a wider range of more elaborate products and meals than street food salespersons and do not generally transport food using, or sell food from, equipment such as handcarts, bicycles or baskets.
- street food vendor
Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.
78 / 100
Mostly holds up against AI
AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.
Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.
The ILO's official verdict: Not Exposed
174 of 427 for holding up against AI
Not quite your week? Make it yours ↓
Why this score?
The ILO rated each of this job's 5 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 22.5 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 22.5 = 77.5.
That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.
This job rates 39.4 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.
from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use
Man v Bot · compare
Who holds up better?
Street food salespersons 78
vGo on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.
Man v Bot
Where the bot helps, and where the human wins
Bot
What AI takes
The routine stuff. You may not miss it.
- Mobile payments.
- Licences and permits online.
- Orders through delivery apps.
Man
What people still do better
Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.
- Cooking fresh food fast.
- Serving customers face to face.
- Choosing the spot and moving the stall.
Both
What's arriving
New work that only exists because the AI does.
- Delivery apps.
- Social media following.
- Food safety rules and inspections.
Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.
Meet your two rivals
They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.
The AI
Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.
Threat level: Medium
42 could do without you
It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 61 of 100.
The robot
The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.
How much it matters here: Lower
39 how hands-on
Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.
So could a robot do the physical part?
Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.
Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 18 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.
hands-on
and cramped
Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on
The small print
They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.
From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs .
finger skill 21.4 · hand skill 17.9 · cramped spaces 13.2 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50
estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement
The job, task by task
Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.
AI's favourite task here scores 36, against an average of 23. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.
- 36
Displaying and selling food and drinks and accepting payment.
Low - 31
Obtaining permission or a licence, where required, to sell food and drinks on the street or in a public place
Low - 22
Preparing, either beforehand or on the spot, food and drinks for sale
Very Low - 14
Obtaining food and drinks for sale
Very Low - 10
Loading and unloading, pushing, pedalling or carrying handcarts, trucks, trays or baskets to bring food and drinks to the desired place in the street, or to public places such as stations or cinemas
Very Low
5 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's
from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use
New · the weekly task audit
Your week, your score
The score above assumes street food sellers spend the same time on every task. You don't. Slide each task to how much of your week it takes, and we'll re-weight the same ILO ratings to fit your job.
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
Your score
78 / 100
Same as the job as a whole, so far.
Move the sliders to make it yours.
The job as a whole: 78 / 100
Link copied.
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Sidekick or replacement?
A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.
- AI helps you
- 61
- AI does it for you
- 42
Sidekick wins, by 19 points.
How good a match is this?
One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.
estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 6217
So, should street food sellers be worried?
Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.
No. Selling and getting licences are the most exposed tasks, both Low; cooking and moving the stall rate Very Low. Mobile payments and delivery apps help, but street food is made and sold in person.
Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.
Where this job could lead
None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →
How are the neighbours doing?
There are 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” family, averaging 74. This one is above the family average.
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- Food service counter attendants 76
- Service station attendants 76
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- Waiters 72