UK AI Exposure · Elementary occupations
Waiters and waitresses
Waiters and waitresses serve food and beverages in hotels, clubs, restaurants public houses and other establishments.
- Employees (UK)
- 146k
- Median annual pay
- £10,000
- Exposure score ?
- 0.8/10 Minimal direct 0.8 · with tools 2.4
- Wage exposure
- £117m
Higher exposure than 48% of the 379 UK occupations we scored.
What this score means
Most of this role's work is still genuinely hard for AI to do. Physical presence, bodily skill, high-context judgment, direct human care - the things that don't translate to text.
If you're in this role, here's what to do now
You're not in the firing line today. But the frontier moves. Build enough AI fluency now that you can direct it for the parts of your work that could benefit. People in unexposed roles who understand AI become unusually valuable inside their organisations.
The tasks in this role, ranked by AI exposure
Below are the real tasks O*NET records for this occupation, sorted highest exposure first. "AI can do this" means a language model can already handle the task directly. "AI can help" means an LLM can assist but not replace. "Human work" means today's AI doesn't touch it. Importance is O*NET's 1–5 rating of how central each task is to the role.
2 of 25 tasks in this role are things an AI can already do today. Task list mapped via O*NET "Waiters and Waitresses" (35-3031.00).
Write patrons' food orders on order slips, memorize orders, or enter orders into computers for transmittal to kitchen staff.
Explain how various menu items are prepared, describing ingredients and cooking methods.
Collect payments from customers.
Check patrons' identification to ensure that they meet minimum age requirements for consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Check with customers to ensure that they are enjoying their meals, and take action to correct any problems.
Take orders from patrons for food or beverages.
Prepare checks that itemize and total meal costs and sales taxes.
Remove dishes and glasses from tables or counters, and take them to kitchen for cleaning.
Clean tables or counters after patrons have finished dining.
Serve food or beverages to patrons, and prepare or serve specialty dishes at tables as required.
Perform cleaning duties, such as sweeping and mopping floors, vacuuming carpet, tidying up server station, taking out trash, or checking and cleaning bathroom.
Present menus to patrons and answer questions about menu items, making recommendations upon request.
Prepare tables for meals, including setting up items such as linens, silverware, and glassware.
Stock service areas with supplies such as coffee, food, tableware, and linens.
Roll silverware, set up food stations, or set up dining areas to prepare for the next shift or for large parties.
Inform customers of daily specials.
Assist host or hostess by answering phones to take reservations or to-go orders, and by greeting, seating, and thanking guests.
Fill salt, pepper, sugar, cream, condiment, and napkin containers.
Garnish and decorate dishes in preparation for serving.
Perform food preparation duties, such as preparing salads, appetizers, and cold dishes, portioning desserts, and brewing coffee.
Prepare hot, cold, and mixed drinks for patrons, and chill bottles of wine.
Escort customers to their tables.
Bring wine selections to tables with appropriate glasses, and pour the wines for customers.
Describe and recommend wines to customers.
Provide guests with information about local areas, including directions.
Where a project with Alex usually starts for this role
This role's strict α score is low because its top tasks are judgment, not drafting. But those same tasks compress dramatically when AI is paired with the right context and tools. The three highest-stakes tasks below are usually where we start.
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Collect payments from customers.
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Check patrons' identification to ensure that they meet minimum age requirements for consumption of alcoholic beverages.
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Write patrons' food orders on order slips, memorize orders, or enter orders into computers for transmittal to kitchen staff.
Every role has three or four wedges like these. Finding them takes an hour. Turning them into a workflow your team actually uses takes a few days. Talk to Alex about a project →
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Methodology
This role's exposure score comes from Eloundou et al's 2023 GPT task labels, aggregated by O*NET importance within each O*NET-SOC code, then bridged to UK SOC 2020 via ISCO-08 (ONS Vol 2 coding index) and US SOC 2010 (BLS crosswalk). Employment and median pay come from ONS ASHE Table 14.7a, 2025 provisional. ASHE covers employees only, so self-employed workers are not counted.
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