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French baguette-baking and -vending kiosk wins top prize for innovation

July 1, 2014

A baguette vending machine developed by French baker Jean-Louis Hecht has won the top prize in an annual French competition for unique inventions, the Concours Lepine.

Hecht's Pani Vending machine, which cooks and sells baguettes 24 hours a day, won the competition’s President of the Republic prize. 

Hecht, who patented the Pani Vending machine with his brother Jean-Claude, has sold 20 of the machines in France and four in Russia, the French edition of The Huffington Post reports.

The Pani Vending machines charge €1.00 ($0.92) to cook and dispense a pre-baked baguette. Operators can remotely manage their machines using PCs or smartphones.

Within a few months of buying a Pani Vending machine, French baker Yvan Hocquel sold around 11,000 baguettes, which helped him to pay for his €55,000 ($75,070) investment in the technology, Solar News quotes Reuters as saying.