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Fast food cooks

Official title Cooks, Fast Food (SOC 35-2011)

Also called Quick service restaurant cook, QSR cook, Fry cook, Counter cook, Fast food kitchen worker

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 641,070 US fast food cooks, with median pay of $30,890 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the highest was 768,130, in May 2021. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 12,000 from 1948, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for fast food cooks: Labor-saving equipment and self-serve kiosks, 2012 to 2020.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to change +0.6% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

  • 0.81 estimated probability that the whole occupation could be computerised, over an unspecified number of years. Not a forecast of job losses. Frey and Osborne, 2013

Since the 2013 prediction

In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.81. BLS counted 507,940 of these jobs in May 2013 and 641,070 in May 2025. The count moved sharply in one step, May 2020 to May 2021, when BLS changed how it estimates these counts, so no change is derived here.

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Fast food cooks: jobs and pay since 1948 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/35-2011

Chicago

Future History. "Fast food cooks: jobs and pay since 1948." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/35-2011.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_35_2011, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Fast food cooks: jobs and pay since 1948}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/35-2011}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
1925195019752000now
2026
Known then as Short-Order Cook / Hamburger Stand Cook (chain formation era)
Known then as Counter Cook / Drive-In Cook (Speedee Service era)
Known then as Fast Food Cook / Crew Member (franchise expansion era)
Known then as Crew Member / Kitchen Crew (standardized QSR era)
Known then as Cooks, Fast Food (BLS SOC 35-2011)
Known today as Cooks, Fast Food (BLS SOC 35-2011)
Projected to still be called Cooks, Fast Food (BLS SOC 35-2011)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
641K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$30,890

≈ $30,098 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1921

Walter Anderson and Billy Ingram open the first White Castle in Wichita, Kansas, with $700 in capital. Anderson had been cooking hamburgers at street stands since 1916 and had standardized the process into a written production manual. White Castle is broadly credited as the first fast food chain: it established the model of a standardized kitchen, a written procedure for every task, and a cook defined as a technician executing a system rather than a craftsperson expressing culinary judgment. The white exterior and visible kitchen were deliberate choices to counter the contemporary public perception that ground beef was unsanitary.

Beat · 1948

Richard and Maurice McDonald redesign their San Bernardino drive-in as the Speedee Service System: twelve crew positions, each assigned a single task, operating like an automobile assembly line. The brothers eliminate carhops, dishwashers, and varied menu items, reducing the offering to hamburgers, french fries, and milkshakes. They can fill an order in 15 seconds. Ray Kroc, a milkshake machine salesman, visits the restaurant in 1954 and becomes so impressed he negotiates franchise rights. By 1958 McDonald's has sold 100 million hamburgers; by 1963 it opens its 500th location. The Speedee Service System is the industrial template that defines the fast food cook's job description for the next 75 years.

Beat · 1969

Dave Thomas opens the first Wendy's in Columbus, Ohio, on November 15, 1969, introducing a key labor innovation: the drive-thru window, incorporated into early Wendy's locations from the start. By 1975 Wendy's has it in all restaurants; Burger King follows that same year; McDonald's at scale shortly after. The drive-thru fundamentally changes the pacing of kitchen work, tying production to a traffic-driven external timer rather than a customer-visible queue. By the late 1980s the drive-thru represents the majority of QSR sales, making the invisible speed of the cook more economically important than any customer-facing behavior.

Beat · 1978

By 1978, 59% of US teenagers are in the workforce, many in fast food. The fast food industry's deliberate recruitment of part-time teen labor, perfected through the franchise expansion decade of the 1970s, has created a structural feature of the occupation that persists to the present: median wages track closely with the federal minimum, the workforce is heavily part-time, and average tenure is short. The industry's labor model depends on high turnover and rapid on-the-job training rather than long-term skill development, which both shapes the cook's career trajectory and makes the role attractive to robotic substitution.

Beat · 1994

BLS publishes "Occupational wages in the fast-food restaurant industry" in the Monthly Labor Review (August 1994), documenting that fast food wages are tightly correlated with the federal minimum wage. The article establishes what labor economists will confirm for the next three decades: fast food is a minimum-wage industry, and the cook's wage floor rises primarily when the legal floor rises, not through market competition or skill premiums. The federal minimum wage in 1994 was $4.25/hr; fast food cooks averaged modestly above minimum at roughly $5.00-$5.50/hr.

Beat · 2012

On November 29, 2012, over 100 fast food workers from McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Domino's, Papa John's, KFC, and Pizza Hut walk off their jobs in New York City in what the New York Times describes as "the biggest wave of job actions in the history of America's fast-food industry." Organized by the Fast Food Forward movement (later Fight for $15), workers demand $15/hr and the right to unionize without retaliation. The movement spreads nationally through 2013-2016 and contributes directly to state and city minimum wage increases: New York State raises the QSR minimum to $15 by 2018; California raises the QSR-specific minimum to $20 in April 2024. The Fight for $15 represents the first major organized labor action in the fast food industry's 90-year history.

Beat · 2024

California AB 1228 (the FAST Recovery Act) takes effect April 1, 2024, raising the minimum wage for fast food workers at chains with more than 60 US locations to $20/hr, creating a floor substantially above the federal minimum ($7.25) and well above the state minimum ($16). Within weeks of the law taking effect, several California chains report reducing hours and cutting positions; Pizza Hut franchise operators announce layoffs of delivery drivers; a Rubio's location closes citing the new labor cost. The California experiment is the most significant real-world test of the relationship between fast food wages and automation investment: a higher wage floor makes Flippy's $5,400/month service fee more economically attractive relative to the displaced labor cost.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace fast food cooks? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+0.6%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 35-2011 (Cooks, fast food): 640.5 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 644.1 thousand in 2035, a change of +3.6 thousand (+0.6%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers. The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Frey & Osborne (2013), "The Future of Employment"
2013 study · Probability of computerisation (2013 model)
81%
probability
What this measures

Published appendix value for SOC 2010 35-2011 Cooks, Fast Food: probability of computerisation 0.81, rank 441 of 702 (rank 1 is least computerisable). Frey and Osborne estimated in 2013, with a Gaussian-process classifier on O*NET variables, how likely the whole occupation is to be technically automatable over "some unspecified number of years, perhaps a decade or two". It is a probability for the occupation, not a share of tasks and not a forecast of jobs lost.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for fast food cooks

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereOperate and monitor the fryer station: load food baskets (fries, chicken, onion rings), manage cook times on multiple simultaneous orders, and quality-check finished items for color, crispness, and internal temperature

Operate and monitor the fryer station: load food baskets (fries, chicken, onion rings), manage cook times on multiple simultaneous orders, and quality-check finished items for color, crispness, and internal temperature. This includes overriding or resetting robotic fryer systems when they fault or fall behind during rush periods.[4],[6],[1]

Where your edge is

Learn to operate and reset the robotic fryer systems your restaurant deploys. Workers who can troubleshoot Flippy faults and keep the fry station running during equipment issues are far more valuable than those who only know the manual process.

AI is sitting alongside you hereTrack ingredient usage and waste during the shift using the restaurant's food management system: log items discarded (expired, overcooked, or dropped), flag low-stock items for the next supply order, and reconcile end-of-shift waste against the prep-level forecast.

Track ingredient usage and waste during the shift using the restaurant's food management system: log items discarded (expired, overcooked, or dropped), flag low-stock items for the next supply order, and reconcile end-of-shift waste against the prep-level forecast.[9],[11]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Use waste data to improve your own prep decisions. If the same item is consistently over-prepped and discarded on your shift, that's a signal to raise with your supervisor. Workers who connect waste numbers to menu and prep choices are doing operations analysis, a skill valued in shift supervisors.

AI is sitting alongside you herePrepare sandwiches, burgers, wraps, and tacos by assembling components in the sequence required by each order ticket, reading kitchen display system (KDS) orders accurately, applying correct condiments and portions, and packaging finished items to brand standard within target hold times.

Prepare sandwiches, burgers, wraps, and tacos by assembling components in the sequence required by each order ticket, reading kitchen display system (KDS) orders accurately, applying correct condiments and portions, and packaging finished items to brand standard within target hold times.[1],[7]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Work to internalize brand standards for each menu item so you can produce consistently without needing to re-read instructions for every order. Speed and accuracy together are what a kitchen display system measures: the workers who keep their error rate low are the ones who advance to training roles.

Where fast food cooks go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

The most common and direct promotion path from fast food cook. First-line supervisors handle shift scheduling, inventory ordering, staff training, and operational oversight: tasks a fast food cook already performs informally. Chains including McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Burger King actively promote from within; no degree is required, and most provide in-house management training. ServSafe Manager certification is the key formal credential. Workers who already understand the kitchen's AI systems (robotic fryers, KDS routing, voice drive-thru escalations) are particularly valued as supervisors because they can train and troubleshoot.

What you'd add
  • · ServSafe Manager certification (National Restaurant Association, ~$36 exam)
  • · Basic labor scheduling: reading foot-traffic data to set shift coverage
  • · Inventory ordering: working with par-level systems and supplier lead times
  • · Conflict resolution and team coaching for kitchen staff
What it takesMost of your skills carry over
Tools of the era

How has the work of fast food cooks changed since 1921?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Open grill + standardized manual process (White Castle era)

    White Castle's founding innovation was not a new cooking device but a new production philosophy: standardize everything the cook does. Walter Anderson documented every step of hamburger production in a written manual, specified the weight of each patty, required workers to maintain clean uniforms, and trained staff to cook by procedure rather than judgment. The grill itself was a simple flat-top; the "technology" was the system around the cook. For the first time, a kitchen worker's role was defined by adherence to a written procedure rather than by culinary skill. This model would prove the template for every fast food kitchen that followed.

  • Speedee Service System kitchen assembly line (McDonald's, San Bernardino, 1948)

    When brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald redesigned their drive-in in San Bernardino, California in 1948, they took the industrial assembly line concept and applied it to the kitchen. Each of the twelve kitchen crew had a single task: one flipped burgers, one toasted buns, one applied condiments, one wrapped finished sandwiches. Roles were interchangeable; no individual cook needed to know the full process. The system could fill an order in several seconds. The McDonald brothers eliminated carhops, dishwashers, and varied menu items. In doing so they redefined the fast food cook as a specialist within a system rather than a generalist in a kitchen: a production-line worker who happened to work with food. This model spread to Burger King (1953), Wendy's (1969), Taco Bell (1962), and hundreds of franchised chains through the 1950s and 1960s, making it the dominant operational template for the industry.

    Effect on the work

    The assembly-line kitchen dramatically reduced the skill level required for each individual station, enabling chains to hire unskilled workers, train them in hours rather than days, and staff restaurants with high-turnover, part-time crews. By the 1970s fast food had become the entry-level employer of choice for American teenagers.

  • Drive-thru intercom ordering (In-N-Out 1948; mainstream chains 1975+)

    In-N-Out Burger installed the first fast food drive-thru intercom system in Baldwin Park, California in 1948, but the format did not reach mass chain adoption until the mid-1970s. Wendy's incorporated drive-thru windows in all its early restaurants in the 1970s; Burger King introduced drive-thrus across its system in 1975; McDonald's followed at scale thereafter. For the cook, the drive-thru created a new operational pressure: orders arrived faster, in bursts defined by traffic patterns rather than walk-in customers, and were submitted by voice rather than in person. The intercom separated order-taking from order-preparation and created the kitchen's signature challenge: racing the timer between the speaker and the pickup window. By the late 1980s drive-thru orders represented more than half of total sales at most major chains, permanently reshaping the kitchen's production rhythm around a two-to-three minute service clock.

    Effect on the work

    Drive-thru adoption increased the speed requirements placed on kitchen crews without materially reducing headcount. It did shift labor toward speed-optimization: chains developed more precise assembly sequences and display timers to hit service goals.

  • Kitchen Display System (KDS) and POS integration

    Electronic kitchen display systems, which replaced paper order tickets at the cook's station with real-time digital screens showing orders, timing, and station-routing, became standard at major QSR chains through the 1990s and 2000s. The KDS separated the order-taking and cooking functions more precisely: the drive-thru cashier's input appeared instantly at the correct cook station. Order accuracy metrics became measurable and tracked. The cook's job became more explicitly data-mediated: the screen told you what to make, in what sequence, and how long you had. Speed-of-service timers displayed countdown clocks. Chains could measure throughput per kitchen per hour and set targets accordingly. The KDS did not reduce employment but it deepened the productivity and accountability framework around the cook, transforming an informal skilled-craft role into a measurable production function.

  • Labor-saving equipment and self-serve kiosks (dispenser automation, touchscreen ordering)

    Through the 2010s, QSR chains invested in a wave of kitchen equipment designed to reduce labor per transaction without full robotics: automatic drink dispensers that filled cups to specification without a crew member, automated soft-serve machines, touchscreen ordering kiosks that shifted order-entry from counter staff to customers (McDonald's deployed kiosks system-wide in the US by 2020), and digital food management systems that tracked hold times and waste. For the cook, the kiosk shift changed who was routing orders into the kitchen: instead of a human cashier, orders now arrived directly from customer-facing screens, increasing order volume but reducing the verbal communication channel through which special requests had been clarified informally. Food waste AI systems (Winnow, deployed at 3,500+ sites in many countries) began automating the manual waste-logging task that cooks had performed at end of shift.

  • Robotic fry stations and AI kitchen vision (Flippy, Yum/Nvidia, voice drive-thru AI)

    Miso Robotics launched Flippy, a robotic arm that operates the fry station, in 2017. Flippy processes more than a hundred baskets per hour using computer vision and a robotic arm. In March 2025, Yum Brands announced an industry-first partnership with Nvidia to deploy AI-powered computer vision across hundreds of restaurants for monitoring kitchen operations and drive-thru lanes. Voice AI systems (Presto Voice, SoundHound Dynamic Drive-Thru) automate drive-thru order-taking at hundreds of locations for Wienerschnitzel, CKE Brands, and others. For the fast food cook, this era marks the first time that core cooking tasks (frying) are being directly substituted by machines rather than merely assisted or timed. The cook's role at robot-equipped locations shifts from operating the fry station to supervising it: loading baskets before the robot takes over, resetting the arm when it faults, and handling oil changes and cleaning cycles per the manufacturer's protocol.

    Effect on the work

    Deployment remains limited to a few dozen locations as of mid-2025, too small to generate statistically detectable employment effects in the BLS OEWS series. The economic barrier is not technology readiness but return on investment versus the labor cost displaced.

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Cooks, Fast Food employment and pay by year

On record since1921
Latest US employment641,070 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$30,890 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+0.6% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error
View all 28 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
194812,000n/aEst., Library of Congress Researched contextReport
1970600,000n/aEst., History.com Researched contextReport
19901,250,000n/aEst., IBISWorld Researched contextReport
1994n/a$10,920BLS historical bulletin August 1994 Researched contextReport
2000527,500$13,590BLS OEWS 2000 Official statisticReport
2003612,960$14,450BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
2004652,500$14,700BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
2005631,190$15,080BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
2006612,020$15,410BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
2007575,510$16,130BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
2008559,160$16,880BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
2009539,520$17,720BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
2010525,350$18,100BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
2011502,450$18,300BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
2012504,740$18,410BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
2013507,940$18,470BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
2014519,910$18,540BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
2015520,010$19,080BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
2016513,200$19,860BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
2017503,780$21,040BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
2018487,510$22,330BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
2019527,220$23,510BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
2020544,420$24,380BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
2021768,130$24,180BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
2022725,590$27,640BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
2023673,490$29,260BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
2024668,230$30,160BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
2025641,070$30,890BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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