JELLY BELLY FACTORY, FAIRFIELD, CALIFORNIA

Belly Flops, from the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield, California

Each visitor to the factory tour receives a bag of jelly bellies upon leaving the factory.  The factory requires you to wear their little paper hats during the tour and does not allow photography of the factory facilities.  You can take pictures of the shop and surrounding area though.

In the Jelly Belly shop, I found these interesting jelly beans.  They’re like those energy drinks, except they’re in jelly belly form.  How cool is that?  I bought a few to see if they’d give me “quick energy”.  I imagine the sugar would be doing that anyway, right?

I was tempted to purchase a whole whack of useless jelly belly paraphernalia, but the nagging thought of my bursting luggage made me reconsider.  I settled on something useful:  Jelly Belly hand sanitizing gel.  I also purchased Chocolate covered jelly bellies (not chocolate flavoured but coated in real dark chocolate!), 1/2 a pound of "birthday cake" flavoured jelly bellies (which taste like frosting) and a pound of pink jelly bellies that I hand-selected because the girls always want only pink jelly bellies and leave the rest to me. Apparently, the favourite flavour is buttered popcorn.  I figured I’d be getting some of those in my bag of Belly Flops.  The Belly Flops are just jelly belly rejects that have been bagged for purchase and they’re all mixed up depending on what flops were produced.

We used our GPS to get to the Jelly Belly Factory.  Boy was that thing useful on our trip.  I highly recommend you use one if you travel to parts unknown. 

In front of the factory was a cute VW bug with Jelly Belly decor all over it.  Several transport vehicles also had the Jelly Belly characters and logos plastered all over them too.  We thought they were cool.

Inside the factory, there is a cafeteria where you can order Jelly Belly shaped pizza. 

If you look up while you’re in the huge lineup for the factory tours…and believe me, you’ll be waiting for a while, you’ll notice Jelly Belly decor and mosaic pictures created by jelly bellies being glued together onto a canvas to create an image.  The best ones are the images of Ronald Reagan and Elvis, I think.

These are actual individual jelly bellies of different colours/flavours glued down in a mosaic to create the image.  Neat, eh?

At the Sample Bar, you can try any of the flavours you are interested in before you buy. 

I saw this cute cupcake made of jelly bellies and couldn’t resist taking a pic of it.

The Jelly Belly Factory Tour is a great activity for kids.  The tour is about 40 minutes long.  The lineup for the tour is just about as long.  You can purchase Belly Flops, unique flavours, mix and match or buy case lots of one flavour only.  It truly is an amazing place.  It smells of sugar and fun and is a definite must see if you are in the area.  On a previous trip to the Jelly Belly Factory, I also went on a Beer Factory Tour.  It’s good if you don’t have kids tagging along in that case and this was B.C. (Before Children).    There’s a Budweiser Factory in Fairfield that gives tours and tastings and that was a good excursion too.

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