On our way from San Francisco, we stopped off in Fairfield, CA, for a tour of the world famous Jelly Belly factory. RV parking here was excellent, with plenty of large spaces. We got inside and found a pretty long line waiting for the tour. We probably stood in line for close to an hour, but the tour itself was over 30 minutes, so all in all, well worth the time and effort, and price (free!). I didn’t see any familiar HMI software running, but plenty of box makers, conveyor belts, and control’s of all kinds. The process they take is pretty involved, but yet they are producing massive quantities day after day. Getting all of the historical information was cool as well. The artwork made from jelly bellies was fascinating. The one piece of info that still kinda haunts me is when they said it took 9 months for one of the Jelly Belly portraits to be made. Why??? Maybe waiting for just the right shade of bean?
While we didn’t eat at the cafeteria, we did get to see how they had bean shaped burgers, and bean shaped pizza’s. Very much into the bean. We made it out of there with a couple of chocolate things (it is a candy making place, so not just jelly beans), some gummy worms, and a bag of “Belly Flops”, which are the beans that don’t make the cut to be real Jelly Belly’s. These are the ones that are two or three beans stuck together, or other abnormalities. Hopefully none of them are the rotten egg or dog poop flavor. (Yeah, they have those there too).