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What is a Restaurant Cook?
Career Description Prepare, season, and cook dishes such as soups, meats, vegetables, or desserts in restaurants. May order supplies, keep records and accounts, price items on menu, or plan menu.
Life As a Restaurant Cook
- Season and cook food according to recipes or personal judgment and experience.
- Plan and price menu items.
- Carve and trim meats such as beef, veal, ham, pork, and lamb for hot or cold service, or for sandwiches.
- Observe and test foods to determine if they have been cooked sufficiently, using methods such as tasting, smelling, or piercing them with utensils.
- Ensure freshness of food and ingredients by checking for quality, keeping track of old and new items, and rotating stock.
- Bake, roast, broil, and steam meats, fish, vegetables, and other foods.
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Qualities of a Restaurant Cook
Restaurant Cooks state the following job skills are important in their day-to-day work.
Monitoring: Monitoring/Assessing performance of yourself, other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action.
Active Listening: Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
Speaking: Talking to others to convey information effectively.
Time Management: Managing one’s own time and the time of others.
Critical Thinking: Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
Coordination: Adjusting actions in relation to others’ actions.
Types of Restaurant Cook Jobs
- Breakfast Cook
- Appetizer Preparer
- Foreign Food Specialty Cook
- Vegetable Cook
- Prep Cook (Preparation Cook)
Is There Job Demand for Restaurant Cooks?
In the United States, there were 1,231,900 jobs for Restaurant Cook in 2016. New jobs are being produced at a rate of 11.8% which is above the national average. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts 145,300 new jobs for Restaurant Cook by 2026. Due to new job openings and attrition, there will be an average of 195,300 job openings in this field each year.
The states with the most job growth for Restaurant Cook are Colorado, Utah, and Texas. Watch out if you plan on working in Ohio, West Virginia, or Maine. These states have the worst job growth for this type of profession.
Average Restaurant Cooks Salary
Restaurant Cooks make between $19,420 and $37,630 a year.
Restaurant Cooks who work in District of Columbia, Washington, or New Jersey, make the highest salaries.
Below is a list of the median annual salaries for Restaurant Cooks in different U.S. states.
| State | Annual Mean Salary |
|---|---|
| Alabama | $24,080 |
| Alaska | $30,230 |
| Arizona | $28,330 |
| Arkansas | $22,980 |
| California | $30,620 |
| Colorado | $29,490 |
| Connecticut | $30,450 |
| Delaware | $27,430 |
| District of Columbia | $33,840 |
| Florida | $27,740 |
| Georgia | $24,280 |
| Hawaii | $34,330 |
| Idaho | $24,880 |
| Illinois | $27,720 |
| Indiana | $24,570 |
| Iowa | $24,700 |
| Kansas | $23,640 |
| Kentucky | $22,920 |
| Louisiana | $23,230 |
| Maine | $28,780 |
| Maryland | $28,220 |
| Massachusetts | $32,430 |
| Michigan | $25,550 |
| Minnesota | $29,120 |
| Mississippi | $22,340 |
| Missouri | $25,180 |
| Montana | $25,230 |
| Nebraska | $28,280 |
| Nevada | $31,960 |
| New Hampshire | $29,200 |
| New Jersey | $33,200 |
| New Mexico | $24,100 |
| New York | $30,440 |
| North Carolina | $24,950 |
| North Dakota | $28,130 |
| Ohio | $25,560 |
| Oklahoma | $24,000 |
| Oregon | $29,340 |
| Pennsylvania | $26,510 |
| Rhode Island | $30,890 |
| South Carolina | $23,680 |
| South Dakota | $26,630 |
| Tennessee | $24,370 |
| Texas | $25,400 |
| Utah | $27,350 |
| Vermont | $31,180 |
| Virginia | $26,590 |
| Washington | $32,370 |
| West Virginia | $23,520 |
| Wisconsin | $25,910 |
| Wyoming | $29,750 |
What Tools & Technology do Restaurant Cooks Use?
Below is a list of the types of tools and technologies that Restaurant Cooks may use on a daily basis:
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft Office
- Inventory management software
- Menu planning software
Becoming a Restaurant Cook
What kind of Restaurant Cook requirements are there?
What work experience do I need to become a Restaurant Cook?
You May Also Be Interested In…
Are you already one of the many Restaurant Cook in the United States? If you’re thinking about changing careers, these fields are worth exploring:
References:
Image Credit: U.S. Army Europe Images via Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
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