The march of progress may soon claim some more victims, as fast food restaurant chain Wendy’s has announced that it will be rolling out order-and-pay kiosks to a number of its stores across the country by the end of 2016, putting a number of its employees out of a job.

At least for the moment, Wendy’s will continue using real people to actually reheat cook its food, but many cashiers and drive-through attendants will soon find themselves replaced by touchscreens and mobile apps.

After the news broke about the roll-out of the kiosks, several news outlets reported that all Wendy’s locations would have them by the end of the year, but Wendy’s was quick to point out that this was incorrect.

“The majority of Wendy’s restaurants are franchise-operated,” Wendy’s said in a statement. “We are in pilot now with self-service order kiosks, which we expect to make available for installation by our franchisees later in 2016. Whether they choose to do so will be up to them.”

“Earlier news reports were not quite accurate. We did not say kiosks would be available at every restaurant by end of year. We do continue to invest in technology to help mitigate the inflation we are seeing on the wage front.”

It is not surprising that Wendy’s would be looking to cut costs by turning to technology, and eliminating jobs through automation is hardly a new trend, especially not in the service industry. McDonald’s has already been rolling out self-serve kiosks for some time now, and a large number of banks have been steadily pushing customers toward ATM and online services while phasing out tellers at the same time.

Wendy’s employees are only the latest casualty of a trend that is becoming increasingly more common as automation becomes cheaper and more widely available.

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