Bean There, Done That: A Fun-Filled Jelly Belly Tour

Looking for an interesting, low-cost adventure with your family? A factory tour can be a fun alternative to spending a lot of money at an amusement park or other high-cost destination. We realized this when we took our family plus two of our sons’ friends to the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, California to celebrate our son’s twelfth birthday.

Passing time in the car

Part of the fun of the tour is getting there. We drove about five hours to get to the factory. To pass the time, I printed out coloring pages for my son and his friends from the Jelly Belly site. Yes, my son and his friends are 12, but we figured how often do they color anymore? Being stuck in a minivan for five hours causes folks to do all kinds of things! We knew they would “decorate” the pictures with their 12-year-old senses of humor – that was part of the fun! Coloring these pages kept them busy for about 10 minutes, but we required each person in the car discuss their pictures (art gallery style) and this burned up a bit more time.

My van is so old, the latest technology is the automatic windows, so watching a movie doesn’t happen on our road trips. However, with this trip we made an exception. We loaded an episode of Dirty Jobs onto my computer to watch in the car. But not just any episode of Dirty Jobs, we found the episode shot at the Jelly Belly factory when the team created a workboot flavored jelly bean in honor of the host of the show. For this car load of boys, it was the perfectly themed choice for our in-flight feature.

Fun as soon as you arrive

As soon as the van turned into the parking lot of the factory, we knew we were in for a good time. A massive, blow-up Jelly Belly mascot sits waiting at the guest entrance, welcoming everyone with a wave in the breeze. However, this is not what caught our boys’ eyes. As we walked toward the entrance we spotted a roulette wheel with the words “BeanBoozled”.

This area invites guests to turn the wheel and take a chance. Jelly Belly makes delicious jelly beans in all flavors. They also create disgusting, horrible tasting beans that taste exactly like vomit, baby wipes, canned dog food, skunk, centipede and other gross flavors. To keep things interesting, the terrible flavors look exactly like other delicious flavors.

Guests spin the wheel and are served either a great tasting bean or a gross flavor. You can’t tell what you will be eating. Of course, we all lined up to take a spin at the wheel. The employee helping guests with their turns “helped” the wheel land on canned dog food/chocolate pudding when I spun the wheel. The wheel master chose my jelly belly for me and it turned out to be canned dog food, NOT chocolate pudding. (Shocker!) It tasted disgusting. We all laughed so hard we almost cried.

The tour

I don’t know why, but I love watching manufacturing machinery. It may be the repetitive motion and humming sound of the machines, or maybe I know the product of all this motion is delicious, I’m not sure. When we took the Jelly Belly factory tour, the machines weren’t running because we toured on the weekend, but I wasn’t disappointed in what I saw. As we strolled along catwalks above the factory floor, we saw neatly stacked racks of thousands of jelly beans and our guide informed us about which step of the candy-making process happened in each area. Video screens helped us get an understanding of what goes on when the factory is in full operation.

I loved learning the history of the company and facts about Jelly Bellies (it takes about seven days to make a jelly bean). The artwork seems impressive from a distance, but on closer inspection, it becomes even more amazing when visitors see each image is made entirely out of jelly beans in a mosaic style. I enjoyed tasting a jelly bean in the various stages of creation. It fascinated me how the process layers the coatings on the jelly center to create the delicious final product.

A family-friendly destination

Often, a family will plan a special trip and feel disappointed when the adventure is over. Families visiting the Jelly Belly factory will be happy they decided to make the trip. The free tour is geared to families with children of all ages. The catwalks have walls to keep guests safe as we viewed the plant. These walls have glass on the top half of the wall so guests can view the plant, but little guests have windows cut out of the bottom half so they don’t miss any of the view. The windows are the perfect height for kids in strollers so parents don’t have to lift kids who announce, “I can’t see!”

As I mentioned previously, our tour occurred on the weekend so the machinery was not in use due to the factory employees enjoying their weekend. Since the machinery wasn’t moving the tour wasn’t as interesting for younger guests. If you are thinking of taking the tour and you have young children, see the tour on a weekday so your kids can see the machines in action. It’ll keep their attention and they will get more out of the experience.

More than just a tour

Guests receive a small bag of Jelly Bellies when the tour is over, but if that’s not enough, the gift shop in the lobby has everything you could want to satisfy your sweet tooth. If you enjoyed being “beanboozled” you can purchase your own kit of great/gross jelly beans –complete with a spinner to take your chances of what flavor you get to try. (Of course we bought this!)

If you want treats that aren’t sweet, you can purchase t-shirts, socks (yes, we bought those, too!), playing cards, sippy cups, and much more. We also couldn’t resist purchasing a few bags of Belly Flops. As you can figure from the name, these jelly beans taste great, but aren’t shaped correctly and have been grouped together and packaged for a lower price than their other jelly beans.

If you still feel hungry, the restaurant in the Visitor’s Center has a reasonably priced menu with kid friendly choices. They even have jelly bean shaped pizza and hamburgers! I was impressed the pricing wasn’t inflated due to the location in the tour center.

When Eileen Calandro isn’t having Big Adventures with her family, she is the Chief Mom Connector of Mom Central. You can read about her other antics on her own blog at calandroclan.com and connect with her on twitter as @MomCentralChat and @calandro5.

Eileen Calandro