Will AI replace Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
3/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 9% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 7% of the work
What the job involves
Operate or tend cooking equipment, such as steam cooking vats, deep fry cookers, pressure cookers, kettles, and boilers, to prepare food products.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(1)
- Record production and test data, such as processing steps, temperature and steam readings, cooking time, batches processed, and test results.
Out of reach(16)
- Clean, wash, and sterilize equipment and cooking area, using water hoses, cleaning or sterilizing solutions, or rinses.
- Read work orders, recipes, or formulas to determine cooking times and temperatures, and ingredient specifications.
- Measure or weigh ingredients, using scales or measuring containers.
- Observe gauges, dials, and product characteristics, and adjust controls to maintain appropriate temperature, pressure, and flow of ingredients.
- Tend or operate and control equipment, such as kettles, cookers, vats and tanks, and boilers, to cook ingredients or prepare products for further processing.
and 11 more
Also called
Cooker Operator · Retort Operator · Corn Cooker · Confectionery Cooker · Cooker · Doughnut Fryer · Fryer · Nut Steamer
Related jobs
- Cleaning, Washing, and Metal Pickling Equipment Operators and Tenders5/100
- Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders7/100
- Food Batchmakers14/100
- Cooling and Freezing Equipment Operators and Tenders4/100
- Separating, Filtering, Clarifying, Precipitating, and Still Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders8/100
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