A few weeks ago we brought you the news that a 24-hour cupcake ATM machine is coming to the Upper West Side. California-based Sprinkles Cupcakes is getting ready to install it in our neighborhood, but when it will be here and where exactly it will go are mysteries.
The whole idea sounded a little far-fetched (you mean I just press a button and a cupcake comes out?). But we now have proof that it works, as shown in this video of Sprinkles founder Candace Nelson using the first machine that was recently installed in Beverly Hills:
Do we really need more cupcakes on the UWS? How about a health-food restaurant aimed at families with kids instead.
What an absolutely brilliant and innovative idea! The next logical step is to create an entire store of these machines — imagine, you insert your money (oops, people don’t use money anymore, do they?), press some buttons and VOILA! Out comes your cupcake! Or your coffee to go with it! Or maybe — dare I say it! — your twelve cheese au gratin fill-in-the-name-of-this-week’s-chef mac and cheese!
And hey — I have an absolutely brilliant and innovative idea for a name for such a 21st-Century iPad-Generation establishment! Let’s call it (wait for it….) “The Automat”!
Jeez. First we replace coin-hungry parking meters with credit-card-slot receipt-machines, and now we replace coin-hungry coffee machines with credit-card-slot cupcake machines.
Is there any real progress here, or are we just phasing out money?