Baguette Vending Machine — The Redbox to the Baking Industry?

Baguette Vending Machines to do to bakeries what the video rental box did full-fledged video rental stores? That’s a lavish headline that an ingenious baker out in France would love to see get some more attention.

Jean-Louis Hecht has made fresh baguettes available to customers at the drop of a coin since his first machine opened in Hombourg-Haut in January. It was reported that machine dispensed 1,600 baguettes, and last month sold 4,500 of them.

The coin-operated baguette vending machines currently sit outside Hecht’s bakeries in Paris and Hombourg-Haut in northeast France. Loaves are pre-cooked, placed in the machines and are warmed up once a purchase is made.

Hecht makes some pretty bold statements regarding his baking vending machine, telling The Telegraph that, “This is the bakery of tomorrow. If other bakers don’t want to enter the niche, they’re going to get decimated.“

Is this where the baking industry is heading? While Hecht’s words of destruction to the industry are grand, this definitely could be a model that the industry should be aware of. Comparing quality edible food distribution to video distribution is comparing Apples to Oranges, but are the differences similar enough to warrant a second thought?