Attribution: Mike Harding
One of the things I like to do is create adventures to try with my daughter. This weekend, we made the drive to Fairfield, California to tour the Jelly Belly factory. Sugar, candy, wacky hats, what’s not to like from the kid perspective? Actually, as these things go, the Jelly Belly Visitor Center and tour are impressive.
Since the tour is free (and each tour participant gets a bag of jelly beans,) I was respectful of their request not to take photos during the tour. Let’s just say it’s an impressive operation they’ve got going there. To make jelly beans, these folks use 100,000 lbs of sugar per day. First they cook a sugar mix then pour it into bean shapes in a cornmeal mold to make the chewy center. Then these centers are “aged” for a couple of days to stabilize after which the centers are removed from the molds.
Then the centers are placed in rotating kettles to get their outer coating, which is still done with much manual labor as the coat is built up with alternating doses of liquid color/flavor and sugar. Once this step is complete, the beans age again for a couple of days. Then they are loaded back into the kettles for a polishing step completed by a final coat of sugar. The beans are then transported to the stamper where the Jelly Belly logo is applied.
One of the interesting things is a sorter/tunnel that the beans traverse which weeds out the bigger and smaller than standard beans into “belly flops.” Finally, the finished perfect sized candy is sent to packaging where there are a large number of possible packaging options. It takes 7-10 days from start to finish to make a jelly bean!
From a business view, this is brilliant marketing and I was incredibly impressed with the cleanliness and disclosure provided during the tour. From a parental perspective, the people couldn’t have been nicer, the environment was “safe” and there was a high entertainment value for the kid. The visitor center is open 9-4 seven days a week (excluding holidays.) Check it out. A couple more pictures from the Jelly Belly Visitor Center are included below.
Lobby of the Jelly Belly Visitor’s Center
Attribution: Mike Harding
Sample Bar at the Jelly Belly Visitor’s Center
Attribution: Mike Harding
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