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American Morning

Robo Shop

Aired August 29, 2002 - 08:56   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Remember the old automat? The last one in New York was actually still open when I came to this town in 1977. You put your money in, you would take your food out of the slot. It wasn't too bad, especially late at night if you were really hungry and there wasn't anyplace else to eat. Well, something like the old automat has turned up in Washington. If you're not old enough to remember, think of it as a vending machine on steroids. Well, or not.
National correspondent Bob Franken is at the robo shop. Robert, what all have they got available in this thing, a vending machine on steroids.

BOB FRANKEN, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is not your father's automat, Jack. And the robo shop is actually called the Tic Toc Easy Shop, although it is certainly a robo shop. It is a massive vending machine, about 200 items. It's sort of the latest in convenient food marts, but the convenient food marts carry usually over 2,000, and usually it's about the same square footage. This is 200 square feet.

The way works is just like anything else these days. You have to take your bill or your credit card. Let's try, Bill. And you slide it in the slot. It's always great fun, and then it sometimes kicks it out, or it doesn't take it. I'm ready for this, by the way. Wait a minute. It is taking the bill, and now it is saying enter the items orders.

Well, I think we've talked about diapers before so let's do that. By the way, in case your wondering, who might use the diapers, the crew is suggesting that perhaps a cry baby correspondent might want to use the diapers. So let's try diapers here. We could order eggs. We could order Crisco. We could order -- let's see, what am I supposed to do here? It says go. Let's hit go and see if it actually does this. Here we go, now you see this scary thing sliding thing over. It's going to the pampers. By the way, I'm really a little bit worried about what's going to happen when I put diapers on my expense account.

But at any rate, you can see that it is sliding the diapers over and the diapers will come out. We could get eggs. We could get Snickers. We could get trail mix. Of course, camera crews always like trail mix. They like that nuts and twigs type of stuff.

CAFFERTY: Can you get lottery tickets?

FRANKEN: You can not get lottery tickets. That's an excellent point. You also can't get slushees. CAFFERTY: And Slurpees right, yes.

FRANKEN: Slurpees and slushees, you cannot get them, which I think is a terrible, terrible shortcoming.

But I really think that this is part of a larger discussion, and it's a discussion.

Wait a minute, here are the diapers. Should I send these to you? This is part of a larger discussion...

CAFFERTY: Easy.

(LAUGHTER)

FRANKEN: ... by the way about the fact that so many things -- so many things these days work without people, and I was thinking for instance, we all know about Audox (ph), we so hate the Audox (ph) machine, and it will come to the time when we have the correspondents where it'll say this is Jack Cafferty, if you want to report on the Supreme Court, please press one, if you want to report on the vending machines, please press two. That's what you got today, Jack.

CAFFERTY: All right, sounds like fun. Thanks a lot.

Bob Franken in Washington, at the robo shop.

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