---
title: "Cook, Short Order"
description: "Prepare and cook to order a variety of foods that require only a short preparation time. May take orders from customers and serve patrons at counters or…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-short-order"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Cook, Short Order

**Category:** Food Preparation and Serving Related · **SOC code:** 35-2015 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 35-2015.00

Prepare and cook to order a variety of foods that require only a short preparation time. May take orders from customers and serve patrons at counters or tables.

Also advertised as: Broiler Cook; Cook; Deli Cook (Delicatessen Cook); Food and Beverage Attendant; Grill Cook; Line Cook; Pizza Maker; Prep Cook (Preparation Cook).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $35,880 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $17.25/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $23,440 to $46,460, with the middle half between $30,610 and $42,450
- **Total US employment:** 138,650
- **Typical entry education:** No formal credential
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -5.6% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 20,600 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 47/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 138,650 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $23,440 |
| 25th | $30,610 |
| 50th (median) | $35,880 |
| 75th | $42,450 |
| 90th | $46,460 |
| Mean (average) | $36,120 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| AZ | $46,630 | $46,316 | 1,880 |
| RI | $46,250 | $45,219 | Not published by BLS |
| MA | $44,290 | $41,879 | 4,760 |
| HI | $43,110 | $39,208 | 460 |
| CA | $42,930 | $38,773 | 30,740 |
| WA | $42,760 | $39,958 | 1,700 |
| CO | $42,450 | $41,193 | 1,900 |
| CT | $42,450 | $40,971 | Not published by BLS |
| DC | $42,450 | $38,626 | 1,910 |
| NJ | $40,720 | $37,425 | 850 |
| ID | $40,090 | $41,982 | 120 |
| VT | $38,830 | $39,639 | 670 |
| OR | $38,550 | $37,296 | 1,780 |
| DE | $38,500 | $38,574 | Not published by BLS |
| MO | $38,490 | $42,382 | Not published by BLS |

36 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 51 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-short-order/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/cook-short-order.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 151,100 in the 2024–2034 base year to 142,700 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 8,400 jobs, or -5.6%. Declining: -5.6% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 20,600 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** No formal educational credential (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Short-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma | 66.4% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 14.4% |
| Some College Courses | 9.5% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 7.4% |
| Associate's Degree (or other 2-year degree) | 2.4% |

## What the work involves

- Clean food preparation equipment, work areas, and counters or tables.
- Perform general cleaning activities in kitchen and dining areas.
- Perform food preparation tasks, such as making sandwiches, carving meats, making soups or salads, baking breads or desserts, and brewing coffee or tea.
- Restock kitchen supplies, rotate food, and stamp the time and date on food in coolers.
- Grill, cook, and fry foods such as french fries, eggs, and pancakes.
- Complete orders from steam tables, placing food on plates and serving customers at tables or counters.
- Plan work on orders so that items served together are finished at the same time.
- Take orders from customers and cook foods requiring short preparation times, according to customer requirements.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 2.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 2.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Time Management — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 2.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Food Production — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Production and Processing — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Communications and Media — importance 2.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Chemistry — importance 2.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Trunk Strength — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Information Ordering — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Manual Dexterity — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Conventional (C), Enterprising (E).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 6.13 |
| C — Conventional | 4.37 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.68 |
| S — Social | 3.19 |
| A — Artistic | 2.27 |
| I — Investigative | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 78.0 |
| ISFJ | 74.8 |
| ISTJ | 74.5 |
| ESFJ | 72.3 |
| ESTP | 61.1 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ISFJ, ISTJ. The bank also flags this occupation as introvert-friendly, meaning O\*NET work-context ratings put it low on public contact and performing for the public.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Cook, Restaurant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-restaurant) — median $37,390
- [Cook, Fast Food](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-fast-food) — median $30,890
- [Food Preparation Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-preparation-worker) — median $35,320
- [Cook, Institution and Cafeteria](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-institution-and-cafeteria) — median $37,450
- [Baker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/baker) — median $37,160
- [Butcher and Meat Cutter](https://nuecareer.com/careers/butcher-and-meat-cutter) — median $40,140
- [Cook, Private Household](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-private-household) — median $47,940
- [Fast Food and Counter Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fast-food-and-counter-worker) — median $31,200
- [Chef](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chef) — median $62,470
- [Food Cooking Machine Operator and Tender](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-cooking-machine-operator-and-tender) — median $41,590

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/cook-short-order