Assist cooks and kitchen staff with various tasks as needed, and provide cooks with needed items.

“Assist cooks and kitchen staff with various tasks as needed, and provide cooks with needed items.” is a core task performed by Food Preparation Workers. Among the occupation's 31 rated tasks, workers place it 30th by importance (#2 most important). About 94% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Prepare foods or beverages. in Handling and Moving Objects

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

How AI is actually used on this kind of task

The Anthropic Economic Index observes how people actually use AI on tasks like this one across millions of real conversations.

• 100% of interactions still needed a human in the loop

Observed AI use describes people choosing to use AI as a tool on this kind of task today. It is augmentation and assistance, not a measure of jobs replaced.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Clean and sanitize work areas, equipment, utensils, dishes, or silverware. · importance 4.7
• Distribute food to waiters and waitresses to serve to customers. · importance 4.6
• Take and record temperature of food and food storage areas, such as refrigerators and freezers. · importance 4.5
• Carry food supplies, equipment, and utensils to and from storage and work areas. · importance 4.5
• Remove trash and clean kitchen garbage containers. · importance 4.4
• Store food in designated containers and storage areas to prevent spoilage. · importance 4.4
• Weigh or measure ingredients. · importance 4.4
• Operate cash register, handle money, and give correct change. · importance 4.4
• Vacuum dining area and sweep and mop kitchen floor. · importance 4.3
• Inform supervisors when equipment is not working properly and when food and supplies are getting low, and order needed items. · importance 4.3
• Prepare a variety of foods, such as meats, vegetables, or desserts, according to customers' orders or supervisors' instructions, following approved procedures. · importance 4.3
• Wash, peel, and cut various foods, such as fruits and vegetables, to prepare for cooking or serving. · importance 4.3
• Distribute menus to hospital patients, collect diet sheets, and deliver food trays and snacks to nursing units or directly to patients. · importance 4.3
• Package take-out foods or serve food to customers. · importance 4.2

See all tasks on the Food Preparation Workers page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27) Anthropic
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-2204,
  title  = {Assist cooks and kitchen staff with various tasks as needed, and provide cooks with needed items.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27); “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-2204}
}