AI exposure: Cooks, Restaurant
Prepare, season, and cook dishes such as soups, meats, vegetables, or desserts in restaurants. May order supplies, keep records and accounts, price items on menu, or plan menu.
Reading this score
computedAt 12.0% of weighted task load, Cooks, Restaurant sits at the 18th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 81.4% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 20 tasks it averages 2.35 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Consult with supervisory staff to plan menus, taking into consideration factors such as costs..., at 80.0%. The least is Butcher and dress animals, fowl, or shellfish, or cut and bone meat prior to cooking, at 0.0%. A gap of 80.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within food preparation and serving occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 18.2% across the group's 16 roles, with 10 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 20 tasks, 4 are currently banded exposed, 1 assisted and 15 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.00 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.35 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.65 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.68 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.12 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.95 | 0-3 |
Task by task
20 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consult with supervisory staff to plan menus, taking into consideration factors such as costs and special event needs. | 80.0% | 20.0% | 0.0% | 4.00 | exposed |
| Keep records and accounts. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.11 | exposed |
| Estimate expected food consumption, requisition or purchase supplies, or procure food from storage. | 70.0% | 17.5% | 12.5% | 4.04 | exposed |
| Plan and price menu items. | 60.0% | 15.0% | 25.0% | 3.46 | exposed |
| Ensure food is stored and cooked at correct temperature by regulating temperature of ovens, broilers, grills, and roasters. | 23.3% | 26.7% | 50.0% | 4.74 | assisted |
| Ensure freshness of food and ingredients by checking for quality, keeping track of old and new items, and rotating stock. | 14.2% | 10.8% | 75.0% | 4.65 | untouched |
| Observe and test foods to determine if they have been cooked sufficiently, using methods such as tasting, smelling, or piercing them with utensils. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 4.37 | untouched |
| Coordinate and supervise work of kitchen staff. | 10.0% | 15.0% | 75.0% | 4.57 | untouched |
| Inspect and clean food preparation areas, such as equipment, work surfaces, and serving areas, to ensure safe and sanitary food-handling practices. | 5.0% | 7.5% | 87.5% | 4.72 | untouched |
| Portion, arrange, and garnish food, and serve food to waiters or patrons. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.69 | untouched |
| Season and cook food according to recipes or personal judgment and experience. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.65 | untouched |
| Bake, roast, broil, and steam meats, fish, vegetables, and other foods. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.53 | untouched |
| Weigh, measure, and mix ingredients according to recipes or personal judgment, using various kitchen utensils and equipment. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.47 | untouched |
| Turn or stir foods to ensure even cooking. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.39 | untouched |
| Substitute for or assist other cooks during emergencies or rush periods. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.30 | untouched |
| Wash, peel, cut, and seed fruits and vegetables to prepare them for consumption. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.15 | untouched |
| Bake breads, rolls, cakes, and pastries. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.94 | untouched |
| Carve and trim meats such as beef, veal, ham, pork, and lamb for hot or cold service, or for sandwiches. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.73 | untouched |
| Prepare relishes and hors d'oeuvres. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.08 | untouched |
| Butcher and dress animals, fowl, or shellfish, or cut and bone meat prior to cooking. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.55 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.