How to become Fast Food and Counter Worker in 2024

Fast Food and Counter Worker Perform duties such as taking orders and serving food and beverages. Serve customers at counter or from a steam table. May take payment. May prepare food and beverages.

Fast Food and Counter Worker is Also Know as

In different settings, Fast Food and Counter Worker is titled as

  • Cafe Server
  • Cafeteria Server
  • Concession Cashier
  • Deli Worker (Delicatessen Worker)
  • Food Server
  • Food Service Aide
  • Food Service Assistant
  • Food Service Worker
  • School Cafeteria Cook
  • Snack Bar Attendant

Education and Training of Fast Food and Counter Worker

Fast Food and Counter Worker is categorized in Job Zone One: Little or No Preparation Needed

Experience Required for Fast Food and Counter Worker

Little or no previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is needed for these occupations. For example, a person can become a waiter or waitress even if he/she has never worked before.

Education Required for Fast Food and Counter Worker

Some of these occupations may require a high school diploma or GED certificate.

Degrees Related to Fast Food and Counter Worker

Training Required for Fast Food and Counter Worker

Employees in these occupations need anywhere from a few days to a few months of training. Usually, an experienced worker could show you how to do the job.

Related Ocuupations

Some Ocuupations related to Fast Food and Counter Worker in different industries are

What Do Fast Food and Counter Worker do?

  • Communicate with customers regarding orders, comments, and complaints.
  • Accept payment from customers, and make change as necessary.
  • Scrub and polish counters, steam tables, and other equipment, and clean glasses, dishes, and fountain equipment.
  • Perform cleaning duties, such as sweeping, mopping, and washing dishes, to keep equipment and facilities sanitary.
  • Balance receipts and payments in cash registers.
  • Request and record customer orders, and compute bills, using cash registers, multi-counting machines, or pencil and paper.
  • Serve food, beverages, or desserts to customers in such settings as take-out counters of restaurants or lunchrooms, business or industrial establishments, hotel rooms, and cars.
  • Prepare daily food items, and cook simple foods and beverages, such as sandwiches, salads, soups, pizza, or coffee, using proper safety precautions and sanitary measures.
  • Clean and organize eating, service, and kitchen areas.
  • Monitor and order supplies or food items, and restock as necessary to maintain inventory.
  • Brew coffee and tea, and fill containers with requested beverages.
  • Serve customers in eating places that specialize in fast service and inexpensive carry-out food.
  • Collect and return dirty dishes to the kitchen for washing.
  • Wash dishes, glassware, and silverware after meals.
  • Wrap menu items such as sandwiches, hot entrees, and desserts for serving or for takeout.
  • Notify kitchen personnel of shortages or special orders.
  • Prepare and serve cold drinks, frozen milk drinks, or desserts, using drink-dispensing, milkshake, or frozen-custard machines.
  • Select food items from serving or storage areas and place them in dishes, on serving trays, or in take-out bags.
  • Replenish foods at serving stations.
  • Perform personnel activities, such as supervising and training employees.
  • Take customers' orders and write ordered items on tickets, giving ticket stubs to customers when needed to identify filled orders.
  • Distribute food to servers.
  • Set up dining areas for meals, and clear them following meals.
  • Add relishes and garnishes to food orders, according to instructions.
  • Deliver orders to kitchens, and pick up and serve food when it is ready.
  • Arrange tables and decorations according to instructions.
  • Plan, prepare, and deliver meals to individuals with special dietary needs.
  • Arrange reservations for patrons of dining establishments.

Qualities of Good Fast Food and Counter Worker

  • Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
  • Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
  • Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
  • Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
  • Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
  • Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
  • Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
  • Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
  • Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
  • Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
  • Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
  • Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
  • Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
  • Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
  • Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
  • Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
  • Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
  • Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
  • Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
  • Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
  • Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
  • Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
  • Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
  • Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
  • Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
  • Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
  • Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
  • Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
  • Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
  • Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
  • Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
  • Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
  • Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
  • Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
  • Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
  • Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
  • Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
  • Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
  • Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
  • Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
  • Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
  • Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
  • Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
  • Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
  • Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
  • Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
  • Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
  • Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
  • Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
  • Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
  • Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
  • Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.

Tools Used by Fast Food and Counter Worker

  • Automatic dicers
  • Automatic peelers
  • Automatic slicers
  • Barcode scanners
  • Blenders
  • Broilers
  • Can openers
  • Cappuccino makers
  • Carbonated beverage dispensers
  • Cash registers
  • Chefs' knives
  • Coffee makers
  • Commercial coffee grinders
  • Commercial coffeemakers
  • Commercial cooking ovens
  • Commercial dishwashers
  • Commercial food slicers
  • Commercial glasswashers
  • Commercial kitchen grills
  • Commercial microwave ovens
  • Convection ovens
  • Credit card machines
  • Credit card processing machines
  • Credit card scanners
  • Deep fat fryers
  • Deep wells
  • Desktop computers
  • Electric ovens
  • Electric stoves
  • Electric warming tables
  • Espresso machines
  • Food choppers
  • Food conveyor belts
  • Food processors
  • Food thermometers
  • Fryers
  • Gas ovens
  • Gas stoves
  • Grating equipment
  • Grills
  • Handheld calculators
  • Ice cream/yogurt machines
  • Ice machines
  • Ice-making machines
  • Infrared heat lamps
  • Intercom systems
  • Juice dispensers
  • Linear imaging scanners
  • Long range charged coupled device CCD barcode scanners
  • Meat grinders
  • Metal ice cream scoops
  • Milk dispensing machines
  • Milk frothers
  • Milkshake and smoothie machines
  • Mixers
  • Motorized food transportation carts
  • Non-carbonated beverage dispensers
  • Pastry makers
  • Patty making machines
  • Personal computers
  • Point of sale POS computer terminals
  • Point of sale POS printers
  • Point of sale POS terminals
  • Point of service scanners
  • Point of service workstations
  • Portion scales
  • Sanitizing units
  • Scales
  • Slicing machines
  • Slush machines
  • Soda machines
  • Soft-serve ice cream machines
  • Steam cookers
  • Steam counters
  • Steam tables
  • Stoves
  • Ticket printers
  • Toasters
  • Touch screen monitors
  • Vertical cutters

Technology Skills required for Fast Food and Counter Worker

  • Aldelo Systems Aldelo for Restaurants Pro
  • Compris software
  • Eclipse Jersey
  • Facebook
  • Foodman Home-Delivery
  • Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale
  • Menu and nutrition database software
  • MICROS Systems HSI Profits Series
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft Office software
  • Microsoft Windows
  • NCR Advanced Checkout Solution
  • NCR NeighborhoodPOS
  • Plexis Software Plexis POS
  • Point of sale POS software
  • Quizlet
  • RestaurantPlus PRO
  • The General Store