The Datum Report

Occupation 9263 · Elementary occupations

Kitchen and catering assistants

Half of full-time kitchen and catering assistants in the UK earn more than £22,886 a year, and half earn less.

Kitchen and catering assistants assist in the preparation and service of food and beverages in restaurants, cafés and other eating establishments, and perform various cleaning, fetching and carrying tasks.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Training is typically received on-the-job. NVQs/ SVQs in relevant areas are available at levels 1 and 2.

What the work involves

• cleans or prepares food for cooks by hand or machine
• carries meat, vegetables and other foodstuffs from delivery van to storeroom and from storeroom to kitchen
• cleans and tidies service area, kitchen surfaces, crockery, cutlery, glassware, kitchen utensils and disposes of rubbish
• prepares and serves beverages and light refreshments, accepts payment and gives change
• keeps service area well stocked

Also called

Catering assistant · Crew member (fast food outlet) · Kitchen assistant · Kitchen porter · Sandwich artist

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for kitchen and catering assistants, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 11 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Bar and catering supervisors · Bar staff · Coffee shop workers · Hospital porters · Leisure and theme park attendants · Other elementary services occupations n.e.c. · Waiters and waitresses