Will AI replace Fast Food and Counter Workers?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
7/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 13% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 11% of the work
What the job involves
Perform duties such as taking orders and serving food and beverages. Serve customers at counter or from a steam table. May take payment. May prepare food and beverages.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(3)
- Communicate with customers regarding orders, comments, and complaints.
- Balance receipts and payments in cash registers.
- Take customers' orders and write ordered items on tickets, giving ticket stubs to customers when needed to identify filled orders.
Out of reach(24)
- Serve customers in eating places that specialize in fast service and inexpensive carry-out food.
- Accept payment from customers, and make change as necessary.
- Brew coffee and tea, and fill containers with requested beverages.
- Serve food, beverages, or desserts to customers in such settings as take-out counters of restaurants or lunchrooms, business or industrial establishments, hotel rooms, and cars.
- Clean and organize eating, service, and kitchen areas.
and 19 more
Also called
Snack Bar Attendant · Cafe Server · Cafeteria Server · Barista · Carhop · Concession Stand Attendant · Crew Member · Deli Clerk (Delicatessen Clerk)
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics