What the work involves, what it pays, and grounded tasks, skills, tools, and experience you can choose from.
Also called boarding house cook, cafeteria cook, camp cook and cook.
$37,450
Median pay a year
441,050
People do this work
6
Resume lines ready for you
Real figures for this work, and lines you can use in your own resume. Where they come from is at the foot of this page.
An example
An Institution and Cafeteria Cook resume, filled in
Common skills that can help you remember what you used on the job.
Monitoring food services
Inspecting facilities
Recording production data
Maintaining equipment inventories
Determining menu item prices
Planning menu options
Cleaning equipment
Cleaning tableware
Moving equipment
Serving food and beverages
Storing kitchen supplies
Cutting foods
Every line comes from the same public record as the rest of this page. The greyed parts are the ones only you can answer.
Institution and Cafeteria Cook
Summary
Cook preparing and cooking large quantities of food for institutions, monitoring food safety, cleaning kitchen areas, serving meals, training new staff, and managing inventory of supplies and equipment
Experience
Institution and Cafeteria Cook
Where you worked
Month Year to Month Year
Cooked food according to menus and special dietary needs for facility residents and employees
Monitored and recorded food temperatures to ensure food safety in the kitchen
Cleaned and inspected kitchen equipment and work areas to keep them clean and working well
Washed pots, pans, dishes, and utensils used in food preparation
Served food to residents, employees, and patrons in the facility
Trained new employees on cooking and food service tasks
Took inventory of food supplies and kitchen equipment for future needs
Skills
Core Skills
Monitoring food services, Recording production data, Maintaining equipment inventories
Checking & Planning
Inspecting facilities, Determining menu item prices, Planning menu options
Hands-On Work
Cleaning equipment, Cleaning tableware, Moving equipment, Serving food and beverages
Education
High School Diploma Your school, Year
Yours will not say this. You choose what matches your experience, and every line remains yours to confirm or change.
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What to put on an Institution and Cafeteria Cook resume
Real duties for this job, already written the way a resume reads. Inside Rung you choose the ones that were yours.
What did you do each day?
Choose what fits, or say your own.
Checked food temperatures for safetyCooked food for meals and dietsStored and rotated food suppliesWashed pots, pans, and dishesServed food to residents and staffCleaned kitchen and cooking equipment
becomes
On your resume
Monitored and recorded food temperatures to ensure safety and compliance with health standards.
Stored and rotated food supplies to maintain freshness and minimize waste.
These are written the way a resume line reads. Rung asks which ones are actually yours, keeps your own words, and never claims work you did not do.
Then it asks for one more thing
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Make it stronger
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Show what improved once the food temperatures were monitored.
The line
Monitored and recorded food temperatures to ensure safety, making food safer for residents
Show what improved once the food temperatures were monitored.
Pick one that fits
Food was safer for residentsMeals were served without delays
Or add your own.
In your wordsAdd it
Adding it to the line…
Added to your resume
Add how often you rotated food supplies.
The line
Stored and rotated food supplies to maintain freshness and minimize waste.
Add how often you rotated food supplies.
Pick one that fits
Every few daysAt least once a weekRegularly throughout the month
Or add your own.
In your wordsAdd it
Adding it to the line…
Added to your resume
Every ready answer is in plain words, never a figure. Nothing is invented to fill a gap.
The work itself
What an Institution and Cafeteria Cook does
The public record of what this job is, in one paragraph.
Prepare and cook large quantities of food for institutions, such as schools, hospitals, or cafeterias.
What it pays
How much does an Institution and Cafeteria Cook make?
Annual pay across the United States. The middle figure is the median: half earn less than that, and half earn more.
25th percentile
$32,440
Median
$37,450
75th percentile
$44,800
About 441,050 people do this work in the United States.
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If you served
Military jobs this work counts as
From the crosswalk the US Department of Labor publishes itself. If one of these was your job, this page is about the civilian work it maps to.
Starting an Institution and Cafeteria Cook resume with no experience
Below are the tasks an Institution and Cafeteria Cook job is made of. Choose the ones you have really done. There is no wrong answer here, and you can change any of it later.
Which of these tasks have you actually done?
4 chosen. Rung never adds a task you did not choose.
Institution and Cafeteria Cook
Already yours: Monitoring food services, Inspecting facilities, Recording production data
4 of the 12 tasks this job is made of
Median pay
$37,450 a year
What you have not done yet. Maintaining equipment inventories, Planning menu options, Cleaning equipment
Great news! Your skills can open up even more doors.
The tasks for Institution and Cafeteria Cook also qualify you for the jobs below. Creating a resume for one of these could help you land even more interviews.
Choose a job below that you would like to target next:
Chef and Head Cook
Already yours: Inspecting facilities, Determining menu item prices
2 of the 12 tasks this job is made of
Median pay
$62,470 a year
What you have not done yet. Checking food and supply quality, Training food service staff, Managing food service operations
This page is about the occupation Cooks, Institution and Cafeteria. What this job involves and what it is made of come from O*NET 30.3, the US Department of Labor's occupation database, refreshed July 2026; Rung writes those records into the plain sentences you see. Pay comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS release for 2025. How Rung handles accuracy is on the accuracy page, and the full data credits are on the credits page.