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Like so many other sectors, the restaurant industry continues to face a severe labor shortage.

The November 2021 jobs report found that employment in the leisure and hospitality sector was down by 1.3 million, or 7.9%, since February 2020—bad enough to prompt U.S. Labor Secretary Martin Walsh to admit he saw “room for improvement” in the industry.

But there’s no simple solution: A rising federal minimum wage, the option of the gig economy, a pandemic, and new attitudes about work and employment, have made it nearly impossible for restaurants to retain employees.

But for fast food restaurants, there appears to be a solution—albeit a controversial one—to bypass the worker shortage: remove workers from the equation altogether. Indeed, the industry appears to be on the cusp of a transition towards automation, and Los Angeles is situated at the center of the coming storm.