Only in Paris: the baguette ATM
Certainly, the world has no shortage of bizarre ATMs.
There’s the mobile ATM in Texas. There’s the gold ATM in Abu Dhabi. There’s the generous ATM in Louisiana.
But few ATMs may reflect the nation they sit in more than this.
In France, the bread-mad French now have to access to exactly what you’d think: the baguette ATM.
Just rolled out in Paris, and in the tiny town of Hombourg-Haut in the country’s northeast, is an automated baguette dispenser that beats your average deposit/withdrawal system.
*Bing: What country pays the highest ATM fees?
Patrons interested in a fresh loaf simply walk up to the 24-hour baguette machine, pop in a euro (about $1.41) and sit back and wait. The baguette ATM takes a partially precooked loaf, bakes it up and delivers the steaming bread to customer within seconds.
Of course, if you’ve ever been to Paris, you know it’s not tough to find a baguette; they’re in every café, grocery and hipster backpack across the city.
But not so, tourist. According to the AP, getting a fresh baguette is especially tough at night, on a holiday or in August, when many of France’s 33,000 bakeries are closed.
“This is the bakery of tomorrow,” says the man behind the baguette ATM, warning that snooty bakers looking down on the innovation will “get decimated” by his machine’s convenience.
If nothing else, curiosity has at least propelled the baguette ATM to a modest market share. In the machine’s debut month, June, it sold 1,600 loaves – then another 4,500 last month.
And get this: if the machine sells 100 baguettes per day, the fully-patented ATM will rake in a whopping 33 per cent profit margin.
Can someone get the French Kevin O’Leary on the phone?
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
Posted by: True Canadian | Aug 18, 2021 8:58:27 AM
This IS a great idea actually, and I am in France every year so I will surely try this out to test this against the size/quality of the typical boulangerie in Paris. The convenience is nice, but I found when I lived there (and still when I visit), I end up buying more than just a loaf of bread, as do many parisians. They should add some more goods and maybe something along the lines of patisseries-type fare....
Posted by: Elmo | Aug 20, 2021 12:53:25 PM
Wow... welcome to the 21st century France. Food dispensing machines have existed for how long now ? So someone just expanded the process to include a mini-microwave to warm up the food fare... not much of a leap from those machines that keep your drinks cold. Big Deal !! Ohhh, and btw, the abbreviation ATM is for Automated Teller Machine, which dispenses cash... NOT food. Maybe they should call it an ABM... for Automated Baking Machine, or an AHM... for Automated Heating Machine.
Posted by: Al | Aug 21, 2021 11:51:27 AM
Haha. That is crazy. Maybe we can get at Timmies dispenser in Canada?