A butcher, a baker and a candlestick-maker walk into a restaurant, place an order on a digital screen and pay a virtual cashier. This is not the beginning of a joke, but a reality the restaurant industry is facing that will affect millions in its workforce.

Technology threatens to replace low- and medium-skilled jobs, predominantly held by people of color, in the $709.2 billion restaurant industry. In May, Wendy’s opened a facility near the campus of Ohio State University that will design and test consumer-facing technologies, including a new online ordering app. In 2011, European branches of McDonalds added 7,000 touch-screen cashiers. McDonald’s claims that the few locations in the U.S. with automated cashiers will not affect workforce numbers, but that’s difficult to believe: Computerization and reliance on robotic technology are already changing the industry.

For instance, Amazon recently reported that it intends for robots to eventually replace its warehouse workers. A February report on the future of innovation and employment from Citi GPS and the University of Oxford, meanwhile, states that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk. And in September 2013, Oxford researchers warned that 70 percent of low-skilled and nearly half of medium-skilled U.S. jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots or other technology in the next 10 to 20 years.

And while the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports (PDF) that the restaurant industry is among the top 10 areas projected for job growth between 2012 and 2022, there are real questions about what that workforce will look like over that period of time.

According to the Restaurant Opportunities Center, more than 11 million people are employed by the industry as managers, servers, cooks, bartenders, hosts, bussers and runners. As of 2015, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that more than 40 percent of food and drink services workers are people of color, and more than half of them are women. Research finds that people of color and women tend to occupy the industry’s lowest-paying jobs and often work behind the scenes as cashiers, bussers and dishwashers. With the automation of many of these jobs, their livelihoods are at risk.

Organizing and political action for reform and policy change offer some recourse to address pressing issues, such as institutional racism and low wages. But unless we address the role of new technology, our most vulnerable workers will yet again be left behind.

In the last two decades, the U.S. has invested significantly in closing technology gaps. Yet advocates of high-speed Internet, for example, continue to draw attention to insufficient access and affordability for communities of color.