AI exposure: Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers
Facilitate food service. Clean tables; remove dirty dishes; replace soiled table linens; set tables; replenish supply of clean linens, silverware, glassware, and dishes; supply service bar with food; and serve items such as water, condiments, and coffee to patrons.
Reading this score
computedDining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers is among the least exposed occupations measured, at 6.6% of weighted task load, rank 858 of 923. 91.4% of this job is work current AI systems cannot produce at all. That is not a statement about skill or value. It is a statement about what these systems can and cannot do.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 23 tasks it averages 2.87 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 Locate items requested by customers, at 86.7%. The least is Stock refrigerating units with wines or bottled beer or replace empty beer kegs, at 0.0%. A gap of 86.7% 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 14 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 23 tasks, 1 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 22 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 | 0.28 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.87 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.59 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.25 | 0-3 |
| Context | 0.62 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.31 | 0-3 |
Task by task
23 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Locate items requested by customers. | 86.7% | 13.3% | 0.0% | 4.35 | exposed |
| Maintain adequate supplies of items, such as clean linens, silverware, glassware, dishes, or trays. | 15.0% | 10.0% | 75.0% | 4.39 | untouched |
| Run cash registers. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 4.53 | untouched |
| Greet and seat customers. | 4.1% | 4.3% | 91.7% | 4.45 | untouched |
| Serve ice water, coffee, rolls, or butter to patrons. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.53 | untouched |
| Scrape and stack dirty dishes and carry dishes and other tableware to kitchens for cleaning. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.52 | untouched |
| Wipe tables or seats with dampened cloths or replace dirty tablecloths. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.52 | untouched |
| Set tables with clean linens, condiments, or other supplies. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.47 | untouched |
| Clean up spilled food or drink or broken dishes and remove empty bottles and trash. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.44 | untouched |
| Fill beverage or ice dispensers. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.34 | untouched |
| Carry food, dishes, trays, or silverware from kitchens or supply departments to serving counters. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.29 | untouched |
| Perform serving, cleaning, or stocking duties in establishments, such as cafeterias or dining rooms, to facilitate customer service. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.27 | untouched |
| Carry trays from food counters to tables for cafeteria patrons. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.18 | untouched |
| Stock cabinets or serving areas with condiments and refill condiment containers. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.06 | untouched |
| Serve food to customers when waiters or waitresses need assistance. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.05 | untouched |
| Clean and polish counters, shelves, walls, furniture, or equipment in food service areas or other areas of restaurants and mop or vacuum floors. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.89 | untouched |
| Replenish supplies of food or equipment at steam tables or service bars. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.18 | untouched |
| Wash glasses or other serving equipment at bars. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.08 | untouched |
| Carry linens to or from laundry areas. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.98 | untouched |
| Garnish foods and position them on tables to make them visible and accessible. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.97 | untouched |
| Mix and prepare flavors for mixed drinks. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.59 | untouched |
| Slice and pit fruit used to garnish drinks. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.58 | untouched |
| Stock refrigerating units with wines or bottled beer or replace empty beer kegs. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.25 | 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.