COOKED
The core loop — watching temperature and moisture gauges, adjusting roast or bake time, recording batch data, pulling samples — is exactly what process-control software and inline sensors already do better and continuously. What holds the job in place is physical: loading and unloading ovens and dryers, clearing jams, cleaning and changing over equipment, and catching a burnt or off-color batch by smell and sight on the plant floor. There is no license, no signature, and the buyer of coffee or crackers never meets you, so the only real moat is that a plant would need capital to fully automate handling, not intelligence.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $31,590 → $44,810 +13.5% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+0.6% 20,700 → 20,800 on the projections basis
Exposed, but growing
AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +0.6% more of these jobs by 2034. Demand for the output is growing faster than the work is being automated away — the mechanism BLS gives for software developers, and the combination people most often misread as an error.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~2,400 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
DrierGunnerSmokerEnroberPeelmanRoasterHam CurerMeringuerBun PannerDrum DrierHam SmokerKiln FirerMeat CurerMilk DrierPizza CookRice DrierRoastermanCorn PopperFish SalterFish SmokerFruit DryerGrain DrierMeat SmokerNut Roaster
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Setting roast profiles, watching drum temperature and bean color, logging batch weights and times, and pulling cupping samples are all already run by PLC recipe control and inline NIR moisture sensors in modern plants — a 7 rather than a 3 because the manual pieces (rake-out, screen cleaning, changeover between product runs) still need a person on the floor, and rather than a 12 because none of the decision-making part of the loop is beyond existing software.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You are inside a hot, dusty production space handling 50-pound totes and hoppers, climbing on dryer decks, clearing chaff and product jams, and hosing down equipment between runs — a 13 because it is genuinely hands-on and non-repeatable in position, but not higher because the plant floor is a fixed, engineered environment rather than the unpredictable outdoor or field conditions that push scores toward 18.
No licence, no signature requirement No state license, no certification exam, no operator signature attaches to a batch; food-safety exposure rests with the plant's HACCP plan and the QA/PCQI who signs it, and a 2 rather than 0 only reflects the employer-mandated allergen and GMP training you sit through.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs Calls are bounded by the recipe card and spec sheet — hold this temperature band, this moisture percentage, reject out-of-color batches — and a 5 reflects the real but narrow discretion to stop a run or dump a burnt lot before QA sees it, with a supervisor deciding anything past that.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (7/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (2/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (3/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (5/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 10 of this occupation's 30 points (33%).
Embodiment (13/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 42/100 — EXPOSED.
Specialty-coffee certification schemes that require named human roasters — e.g. SCA-certified roast profiles, Q Grader involvement, or 'craft roasted' claims on single-origin bags — expanding as a marketing category. Buyers in third-wave coffee and artisan bakery already pay a premium tied to a named human at the drum. This applies only to the small-batch tier, not to commodity roasting or industrial cracker lines.
FSMA Preventive Controls rules already designate a Preventive Controls Qualified Individual who owns critical-control-point deviation decisions. If a plant assigns PCQI status and CCP release authority to the roast/oven operator rather than a separate QA manager — common in small plants where headcount is thin — the operator personally owns the hold-or-release call on a deviated lot.
Task-mix shift within the two-tier structure: if inline NIR moisture and color sensors plus PLC recipe control absorb the gauge-watching and batch-logging tier, the residual job becomes profile development, sensory cupping/QA rejection calls, and changeover troubleshooting on aging equipment. Watch for job postings retitled 'roast technician' or 'process technologist' requiring sensory panel qualification.
Narrow route only: FDA acrylamide guidance or a state cannabis/nut-pasteurization rule requiring a named, trained individual to sign off on validated kill-step or roast-lethality records per batch. Cannabis drying/curing in states like California and Colorado already requires named responsible persons on batch records. This is documentation duty, not personal liability of the kind a license carries.
The limit. Ceiling is low. There is no license, no client relationship, and the strongest holds are capital cost of materials handling and food-safety paperwork — both erodible. Most upside concentrates in the small-batch craft segment, which is a minority of these 20,370 jobs; commodity drying and industrial baking lines have essentially no route up.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,190 | $47,110 +5% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 460 | $48,330 +8% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 440 | $38,230 -15% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 420 | $38,060 -15% |
| Omaha, NE-IA | 380 | $43,410 -3% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 340 | $48,000 +7% |
| San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX | 340 | $34,170 -24% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 320 | $43,940 -2% |
| Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD | 120 | $78,750 +76% |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 310 | $62,890 +40% |
| Modesto, CA | 70 | $61,130 +36% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 30. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.