We took our son to the Jelly Belly Factory. It was very crowded for a Monday. The line to tour the factory was about 20 – 30 mins long. The factory tour is free but if you really want a more up-close tour, there is a fee.
Once we got into the factory to see how the jelly belly beans are made, taking pictures are not allowed. Also, we were told we had to wear the jelly belly paper hats. I thought wearing the jelly belly paper hat was optional. So before we walked inside the factory, everyone in our group including small kids put on our jelly belly hats. The first half of the tour was boring because there was no action to see. We didn’t see factory workers in the first half of the tour. But videos were showed to show the history of the jelly belly factory. There was more action during the middle half and almost end of the tour.
During the tour, we saw workers adding the jelly belly beans inside these horizontal spinning barrels. In that stage of the process, that is when they add the sugar or some sweet liquid that gives the jelly belly beans their taste. In the other part of the factory, we saw the jelly belly beans travel on the conveyor belt then get dumped into these rectangular baskets. The factory workers placed these baskets into a cart with shelves and they keep these carts into some room to dry. At the end of the tour, we went to the packaging side of the factory where the jelly belly bags were boxed for shipping.
The fun part of the tour was eating some samples of the jelly belly beans. We had kiwi, blackberry and other kinds of jelly belly beans. I am not a fan of jelly belly candy but the samples that we had were actually pretty good. Or perhaps I was just too hungry and I would just eat anything. 🙂 At end of the tour, each of us got a free bag of jelly belly beans.
The Jelly Belly Factory didn’t just sell jelly belly beans. They also sold chocolates. Since I love chocolates, I bought a few of almond clustered milk chocolate and I got Nelson his peanut butter cup chocolate. We also bought bottled brinks with different flavors like tangerine and cherry.
