I'd say that during the last 100 AC flights I've taken (not incl. regional flights and short-haul flights for obvious reasons) my meal order has been taken first (along with other SEs') >90% of the time.

I usually pay attention since IME there's a very strong correlation between crew following this SOP and them providing good to excellent service in general. If the crew don't care to take meal orders by status (and there's no good reason such a major delay etc.) odds are the crew will just be average.