Cook → Food Service Worker
Measured from 4,072 live cook postings and the destination’s own corpus. Updated with the nightly scrape.
The judgment call
A cook reaches food service worker at 65 percent skill readiness, measured from 4,072 live cook postings against what food service worker postings ask for. At that number it is a genuinely close move.
What carries over: Food Service, Food Safety, Line Cooking, Catering & Banquet. The gap is the rest of the destination demand, chiefly Customer Service, Maintenance, Hand & Power Tools, HVAC Systems, the skills a typical cook profile does not yet show.
Posted pay for food service worker runs $35k–$40k, demand is rated high, and the estimated time to close the gap is 9–16 mo. This read is drafted from the numbers; the graph above is the full skill map behind them.
Evidence checklist
What food service worker postings ask for, against what a typical cook already demonstrates. Drawn from the skill-overlap data, curated by hand.
- ✓Food ServiceCoveredIn the typical cook profile
- ✓Food SafetyCoveredIn the typical cook profile
- ✓Line CookingCoveredIn the typical cook profile
- ✓Catering & BanquetCoveredIn the typical cook profile
- ○Customer ServiceGapAsked for by food service worker postings, not yet shown
- ○MaintenanceGapAsked for by food service worker postings, not yet shown
- ○Hand & Power ToolsGapAsked for by food service worker postings, not yet shown
Open food service worker roles you could move into
Live openings, freshest first. Apply at the source.
- Plongeur (H/F) - CDD at AccorhotelQuiberon, FRTodayUnlock
- Food Service Worker- Durham NC at Veterans Health AdministrationDurham, North Carolina$38k1d agoApply
Catering Assistant at AramarkPerth, GB1d agoUnlock- Kitchen Porter at AramarkNorthwood, GB1d agoUnlock
- Food Service Associate at DexterraVictoria, CA1d agoUnlock
- Cuisinier / Commis de Cuisine (h/f/d) at JobupSuisse, Switzerland3d agoApply
Related routes
- Cook → Waiter80% readiness
- Cook → Chef65% readiness
Quick answers
Can a cook become a food service worker?
Posted-skill readiness is 65 percent in our corpus. The skills that carry are Food Service, Food Safety, Line Cooking; the gap is Customer Service, Maintenance, Hand & Power Tools.
What skills does a cook need to become a food service worker?
The measured gap, read from live food service worker postings, is Customer Service, Maintenance, Hand & Power Tools, HVAC Systems. Already covered by a typical cook profile: Food Service, Food Safety, Line Cooking, Catering & Banquet. The graph on this page shows the full overlap, skill by skill.
How long does the cook to food service worker move take?
Our estimate from the skill gap is 9–16 mo, shorter for anyone who already holds part of the destination skill set.
What does a food service worker earn?
Posted pay is $35k–$40k, with demand rated high. The salary page for food service worker carries the full distribution.
Method: skill readiness is coverage of the destination’s posting-skill weight by a typical cook profile; salary bands are posted 25th–75th percentiles; observed flow is worker-transition data derived from the CPS (Current Population Survey; see the method section on the instrument). July 2026 corpus. In a typical year 7.9% of cook workers move to a different occupation (BLS Employment Projections, 2024–34).