Service and sales workers · code 5246

Food service counter attendants

A kiosk can take the order and the payment. Someone still has to serve the food.

Taking orders and payment are mostly out of AI's reach. It barely touches five of the eight tasks, including preparing food and reheating meals.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Food service counter attendants serve customers at food counters and finish preparation of simple food items in restaurants, cafés, hotels, fast food outlets, cafeterias, hospitals and other settings. Tasks include - (a) serving food to customers at counters; (b) ascertaining the products desired by customers, assisting them in making choices and taking orders; (c) cleaning, peeling, slicing and trimming foodstuffs, using manual and electric appliances; (d) preparing simple food items and reheating prepared meals; (e) portioning and wrapping food or placing it directly on plates for service to patrons; (f) packaging takeaway food; (g) stocking refrigerators, salad and buffet bars and keeping records of the quantities of food used; (h) receiving payment for food items purchased. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Cafeteria counter attendant - Salad bar attendant Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Cook - 5120 - Waiter - 5131 - Bartender - 5132 - Kiosk salesperson - 5211 - Market salesperson - 5211 - Street stall salesperson - 5211 - Fast food preparer - 9411 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.

quick service restaurant team leader
airline food service worker

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

76 / 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.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Not Exposed

185 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 23.8 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 23.8 = 76.2.

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 35.2 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?

Food service counter attendants 76

Go 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.

Ordering through kiosks and apps.
Cashless payments.
Stock records.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

Preparing and serving food.
Helping customers who need it.
Keeping the counter clean and stocked.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

Running app and delivery orders.
Allergen information and labelling.
Self-service with staff supervising.

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: Low

33 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 55 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

35 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 33 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

35 How
hands-on

33 How fiddly
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 3 US jobs .

finger skill 35.7 · hand skill 38.7 · cramped spaces 24.1 · 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 46, against an average of 24. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

46
Ascertaining the products desired by the customer, assisting them in making choices and taking orders

Low
42
Receiving payment for food items purchased.

Low
29
Serving food to customers at counters

Low
17
Packaging takeaway food

Very Low
17
Stocking refrigerators, salad, buffet bars and keeping records of the quantities of food used

Very Low
14
Portioning and wrapping food or placing it directly on plates for service to patrons

Very Low
14
Cleaning, peeling, slicing and trimming foodstuffs using manual and electric appliances

Very Low
14
Preparing simple food items and reheating prepared meals

Very Low

8 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

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: 55
AI does it for you: 33

Sidekick wins, by 22 points.

How good a match is this?

2 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 4312, 6211

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.03% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 3 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should food counter staff be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

The counter is changing. Taking orders, taking payment and serving are the most exposed tasks, all Low; preparing and packaging food rate Very Low. Kiosks, apps and cashless payments take on a lot of the ordering, so the job leans towards food prep and service.

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.

Pit this against any other job →