On our way to San Francisco 
today we stopped at the Jelly Belly factory 
in Fairfield where they do free tours and tastings and even give you a free bag of Jelly Belly’s.
The good news was that it’s a proper factory tour where you get to see everything, in person and on video as you tour the factory, from the flavour development to the creation of the jelly bean centres to the covering, polishing and packaging. The bad news was that no photography was allowed in the factory, only in the foyer and the gift shop, so not many photos below.
It was actually a really good tour and the factory (unlike the Ben and Jerry’s factory) is huge and produces all the beans they sell around the world. This means you get to see millions of jelly beans being produced in giant “cement mixers”, left to dry in a huge room (I counted a couple of hundred stacks of trays, each apparently holding 10,000 beans) and then being packed by those massive robots you usually see in car plants.
If you think I sound a bit too excited about seeing a sweet factory, you should have seen Jen in the gift shop.
My favourite product was the “BeanBoozled” Russian roulette boxes we bought, which have lot of lovely jelly beans mixed in with some really nasty ones. Will you pick the toasted marshmallow bean or the canned dog food bean? I think some of them may be making their way back to TVI.
Oh, and yes that is a portrait of William and Kate made out of Jelly Bellys. Best not to ask…