CEO Galen Dively had always dreamed of making toasters with truly customised designs.
The craze for selfies has been around for a while now. Everyone, from teenagers to celebrities, is taking them.
Now though, it’s not just about snapping a selfie. You can go a step further and have that selfie for breakfast every morning.
A company named Burnt Impressions, owned by Vermont Novelty Toaster Corp based in Vermont, makes customisable toasters that mean you can burn an image into your toast.
The company specialises in sports logos but you might remember them better for their popular Jesus toaster that burnt images of Jesus into bread.
However, the company CEO Galen Dively had always dreamed of making toasters with truly customised designs. This included toast with peoples’ faces on it.
Dively then bought his own Plasma Cutter from GoTorch, a company based in Colorado. This is basically a metal cutting machine guided by a computer, and it can create the requisite plates in only a couple of minutes.
Dively himself will help create your selfie toaster. After you upload a high-resolution image of your face to the company’s website, the CEO puts the photo into Photoshop.
He told Mashable that a typical photo requires about 15 to 30 minutes of work, as he gets rid of the background around the face.
This edited photo is then transferred to a Computer Aided Design program. This then identifies which lines the CNC plasma machine will need to create your likeness in toast.
The CNC machine is given this information, and uses compressed air combined with electricity to create high-heat plasma and cut through metal.
The GoTorch only needs a few minutes to cut through the plates, and then Dively and his team test the selfie toasting plate by making a piece of toast.
After the plate has been cut, it is put into a custom designed toaster, which can makes two slice of toast: each with a selfie burnt into it.
On their website, Burnt Impressions stress that not every single selfie can work on toast. They say: “We are good, but remember fine detail is near impossible to achieve with heat and toast.”
However, they assure customers: “If we squint and can’t see your face, we will cancel your order and refund your purchase.”
Dively is an entrepreneur with 35 years of experience in making tie-dye shirts, but he has seen potential in toast designs for some time now.
He describes what happens to the bread inside the toaster: “It’s a lot like silk screen, but you’re using heat for the ink and bread as the t-shirt.”
If you want to get your very own selfie on toast, just go to the Burnt Impressions website.
It costs you $75, or £43.87, for your first toaster. However, Dively says he offers discounts if you intend to order more than one.
The toasters also come with a full colour water-peel sticker of your photo on the front, as another personal touch.
In the spirit of his entrepreneurism, Dively’s company also sells glow-in-the-dark fridge magnets with slices of Jesus toast cast in acrylic, and custom picture frames.
Thanks to the experimentation of Dively and Burnt Impressions, now trendsetters can take a selfie whilst eating their very own selfie toast.
