In the traditional food production industry of China, manual sorting is the main method with low automation and a large amount of labor is needed. The paper aims to design a 3-CUR parallel robot for fast sorting in food production. The number and type of the freedom degree of the mechanism were analyzed with the screw theory, and the freedom degree of the mechanism was verified by the modified Grubler-Kutzbach formula. Then the inverse position solution of the mechanism was solved by D-H kinematic chain parameter representation and Euler angle representation; and the workspace of the parallel sorting robot was analyzed and simulated with the three-dimensional dynamic method and the Matlab software. Finally, the motion performance of the robot was simulated with the ADAMS software. The mechanism can realize the movement of one level (along z axis) and two revolutions (around x axis and y axis). It had large workspace and can reach a wide range without singularities. The motion curves of the end-effector parameters changed regularly and periodically, which could satisfy the motion and working range of the sorting robot. The mechanism has excellent motion performance, good stability and good workspace. It can realize high-speed automatic scanning and sorting in food production. It has potential application value in packaging automation.