Will AI replace Food Preparation Workers?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
5/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 11% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 9% of the work
What the job involves
Perform a variety of food preparation duties other than cooking, such as preparing cold foods and shellfish, slicing meat, and brewing coffee or tea.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(3)
- Inform supervisors when equipment is not working properly and when food and supplies are getting low, and order needed items.
- Distribute food to waiters and waitresses to serve to customers.
- Keep records of the quantities of food used.
Out of reach(28)
- Clean and sanitize work areas, equipment, utensils, dishes, or silverware.
- Carry food supplies, equipment, and utensils to and from storage and work areas.
- Remove trash and clean kitchen garbage containers.
- Store food in designated containers and storage areas to prevent spoilage.
- Assist cooks and kitchen staff with various tasks as needed, and provide cooks with needed items.
and 23 more
Also called
Food Prep (Food Preparer) · Food Prep · Kitchen Assistant · Kitchen Helper · Salad Maker · Sandwich Maker · Coffee Maker · Kitchen Worker
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