This freaky french vending machine at the SB public market wants you to push its buttons. You've nothing to fear but literature!

Francis Ford Coppola—writer, director, producer, Brando-wrangler—is a raving fan of the short story. In 1997 (for instance) he launched the much-garlanded literary and art vehicle Zoetrope: All-Story. So it was that when Coppola learned of a nutty Roald-Dahl-like gizmo whose minimalist three buttons promised a new approach to literature, his famous auteur beard broke into a grin and he dove in with brio. “He’d found us through his daughter in Paris and was our first client in the US,” says Kristan Leroy, export director for French publisher Short Édition. “The first installation in the U.S. was at his café Zoetrope in San Francisco.”

Ha già conquistato 250 paesi: ideato da una casa editrice francese specializzata in letteratura breve, lo speciale distributore piazzato nelle stazioni, alle fermate degli autobus o negli aeroporti contiene centinaia di storie che stampa gratuitamente su “scontrini” di carta ecologica.

Let there be lit - Initiative brings on-demand short stories to unexpected places

Reading for pleasure is at an all-time low in the U.S. A recent government report revealed Americans read for fun about 17 minutes each day. "CBS This Morning: Saturday" co-host Dana Jacobson reports on a unique program that brings reading to unexpected places.

Once upon a time there was a start-up with a dream of bringing the pleasures of reading to more people. Happily, this dream came true. At the push of a button the Short Story Dispenser prints out fiction that can be read in one, three or five minutes, for free.

Stories are shared many ways. They are recounted in books and magazines. They are read aloud around the campfire at night. They are randomly dispensed from stand-alone kiosks, doled out on strips of paper like grocery store receipts.
Wait, what was that last one?
Leave it to the French, with their love of Voltaire and Simone de Beauvoir, to revive literature in the era of hot takes, fast news and smartphone addiction.

photo Kalman N. Muller

Patrons at the bar of Cafe Zoetrope in San Francisco have a diversion to help pass the minutes: They can read a story. It’s not a story on their phone or Kindle, or even an honest-to-goodness book, but a story they have printed out from a dedicated machine that stands in the bar.
Short Edition is a French company which, having had success in its native country across 150 venues, turned its attention to U.S. shores.

I loved the idea of a vending machine, a dispensing machine that doesn’t dispense potato chips or beer or coffee for money but gives you art. I especially liked the fact that you didn’t put money in. - Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola
Thusly did filmmaker Coppola arrange for a free Short Edition story vending machine to be installed in Café Zoetrope, his San Francisco restaurant.
The French-built machine is the perfect companion for solitary diners, freely dispensing tales on skinny, eco-friendly paper with the push of a button.

A new French cultural phenomenon is spreading to the US. It’s not creamy cheese or baby-feeding crazes, but very short short stories, printed out on scrolls of paper and dispensed for free from vending machines.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s Café Zoetrope in San Francisco, an odd machine stands in the middle of one of the dining rooms. It’s a tall, black-and-orange cone with a lighted monolith sticking out of its top. The kiosk, built by the French publishing company Short Edition, is called a Short Story Dispenser. It’s the first of its kind in the United States.

The coolest thing about Francis Ford Coppola's Italian restaurant may surprise you!
[...] It’s the slender contraption, a kind of vending machine, that stands in the middle of the front room: a Short Story Dispenser.

Francis Ford Coppola liked the machine so much, he bought one

At any given moment our phones have access to nearly all of the world's knowledge, literature, history and science. Despite such rich resources, many of us opt to kill time by scrolling through social media, messages or random videos. The French company Short Edition is out to change how we spend our time waiting with its Short Story Dispenser.