Do you ever wonder how the fizz gets into your bottle of Coca-Cola? Can you explain how Jelly Belly Candies get their shape, or how a Crayon is produced? Seeing how the hundreds of products in our cabinets are made allows us to marvel at the behind-the-scenes processes involved in producing the things we use every day, but mostly take for granted.

There is no greater source of pride these days than buying a product that was made right here in the United States. Doing so, we know that we are not only supporting our country, but we are supporting the hard work of the men and women in those factories and the American families for which they provide. With one of the largest economies in the world, the U.S. Gross National Product is in the trillions of dollars annually, and this is from a combination of products we buy and use every day. Watch as American companies strive to maintain a competitive edge in an ever shrinking world economy, and you’ll appreciate the quality and superiority behind many of America’s popular and familiar brands.
Anheuser-Busch
12th and Lynch Streets
St. Louis, MO 63118
(314) 577-2626
www.budweisertours.com

Founded in 1852, Anheuser-Busch, now with 12 breweries around the country, is the largest brewer in the world; one of every two beers consumed is an Anheuser-Busch product. The tour begins at the center and takes visitors through the Clydesdale paddock and stables, the lager house and Brew House, and concludes at the Bevo Packaging Plant. The Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale tradition began as a gift from August A. Busch Jr. to his father to celebrate the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1933. The horses make more than 500 appearances annually. The six-story Brew House, where the beer is actually made, is a tour favorite with its clock tower, wrought-iron railings and hop vine chandeliers from the 1904 World’s Fair. The eight-story-tall Bevo Packaging Plant contains 27 acres of floor space and over 25 miles of conveyor belts. This is where the bottles and cans are filled via lightning-fast packaging machines, a far cry from when the building was built in 1917. Notice the fox sculptures on each corner of the building, drinking a mug of Bevo, a non-alcoholic cereal-based beverage that Anheuser-Busch produced during the Prohibition era.

No reservations are needed for tours and free beer samples are available for guests 21-years and older. The plant is open Monday through Saturday, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm and on Sunday, 11:30 am to 4:00 pm. Visitors under 18 must be accompanied by an adult. Bud World, the Anheuser-Busch gift shop, offers everything from clothing to beach gear and many other items featuring the Anheuser-Busch logo.
Ben & Jerry’s
Route 100
Waterbury, VT 05676
(866) BJTOURS (258-6877)
www.benjerry.com

Because of the popularity of this tour, the rolling pastoral grounds around the factory are filled with interactive displays and games, like the interactive timeline, to ease the waiting time. Once inside the factory, visitors look over a glass-enclosed temperature-controlled

mezzanine on a state-of-the-art ice cream factory that churns out almost 200,000 pints per day. In the Cow Over the Moon Theater, visitors watch a seven-minute movie about how two childhood friends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, developed a correspondence course on ice cream making into a multi-million-dollar success story.

After a couple of short videos outlining each step, guests enjoy two samples in the Flavoroom and a chance to visit Ben & Jerry’s Hall of Fame, which is full of memorabilia that humorously document the company’s history.

Open seven days a week from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm (and from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm during the summer), tours are every 30 minutes and tickets are sold ($2 for adults, $1.75 for seniors) on a first come, first served basis. The gift shop operates during the same hours as the tours and offers a host of ice cream flavors as well as a wide variety of merchandise displaying the Ben & Jerry’s logo.

Coca-Cola Bottling Company
55 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, SW
Atlanta, GA 30303-3505
(404) 676-5151
www.woccatlanta.com
When pharmacist Dr. John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola in 1886, he could not imagine that his creation would be one of the most recognizable symbols in the world. Bottled in over 200 countries and enjoyed by billions of soda drinkers, even achieving the status of an American icon. It is said that if all of the Coke ever produced were placed in eight-ounce bottles, the line would stretch to the moon and back nearly 1,400 times. At the heart of the Coca-Cola world, guests get to take a nostalgic journey through the company’s 120-year history, past displays that show historic bottles, bottling equipment and advertisements. There are computerized kiosks that house interactive “time-machines” of Coke history, an area where visitors can listen to and watch the famous line of Coca-Cola radio and television commercials. At the end of the tour each guest is allowed to sample Coca-Cola’s wide variety of products, including two dozen types of soda not available in the U.S.

Though open Monday through Saturday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and on Sundays from noon to 6:00 pm, prospective guests should expect long waits during holidays and Atlanta-area events. The tour and sampling take approximately two hours and cost $6 for adults and $4 for seniors. The gift shop offers everything imaginable from clothing with the Coca-Cola logo to collectibles.

The Crayola Factory
Two Rivers Landing
30 Centre Square
Easton, PA 18042-7744
(610) 515-8000
www.crayola.com
The discovery center at Two Rivers Landing was built in 1996 by Binney & Smith, makers of Crayola products, while the now legendary 64-Crayon box with the sharpener in the side was introduced in 1958. On the factory floor inside the center, visitors will witness actual machinery similar to that used in the nearby production plant. Behind a glass wall, one of the molders that makes only a small percentage of the millions of Crayons that emerge from the factory each year is demonstrated. A mixture of paraffin wax and a pigment are poured into a long table containing many small holes. As the mixture seeps into the holes and cools, four to seven minutes later, 1,200 brand new Crayons are pushed from the mold. Later, the labeling and packaging processes are explained, along with demonstrations in the marker assembly area. In the “Creative Studio,” guests are given a chance to draw on glass with special markers, have your image captured on a huge screen and practice printmaking in the “Easton Press and Bindery.

” On your way out, visitors are given a four-pack of Crayons and any artwork they have created; they are then invited into a 7,200-square-foot Crayola Store to pick from mini to large boxes of Crayola’s most popular products. The factory is closed Monday but open the rest of the week from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm (noon to 5:00 pm on Sunday) and the experience should take approximately two hours.

Hershey’s Chocolate World
Visitor’s Center
Park Boulevard
Hershey, PA 17033
(717) 534-4900
www.hersheyschocolateworld.com
Founded in 1894, Milton S. Hershey started to make chocolate bars at his newly founded company, Hershey Foods Corporation. Today, the largest candy maker in the world makes, among many products, 33 million candy Kisses per day. The visitor’s center dedicated to chocolate features many displays that depict Hershey’s history and a 12-minute ride inside a cocoa-bean-shaped cart as it takes you through the entire chocolate-making process. In addition to the ride, guests see videos that show close-up views of the real production process and a description of how the cocoa beans are harvested in South America and Africa before they make their way to Pennsylvania. To better illustrate this is an exotic tropical garden that shows what it is like where the beans are grown.

The tour is free, and visitors will be treated with a variety of free samples of Hershey products. Though the visitor’s center is open every day from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, expect long lines during the summertime. The gift shop sells a variety of Hershey products.

Jelly Belly Candy Co.
One Jelly Belly Lane
Fairfield, CA 94533
(707) 428-2838
www.jellybelly.com
The publicity that surrounded former President Ronald Reagan’s fondness for these little candy beans lead to an increased demand, a rise in popularity and a surge in production, so much so that they needed to build a new factory, offer tours and add around the clock shifts to produce the approximately 14 billion Jelly Belly candy beans each year. All throughout the tour, the walls of the factory are decorated with large portraits of famous people and places, each one “painted” using 14,000 variously colored Jelly Bellies. From the elevated catwalk that snakes its way throughout the 215,000-square-foot factory, visitors watch not only each stage of the candy’s creation but some of the other candies they produce as well. The softer centers of the Jelly Bellies start in cornstarch molds and harden overnight. After that, they are placed in spinning stainless steel drums and four layers of flavored syrups create the harder out coating.

The tour lasts about an hour and each visitor receives a three-ounce bag of Jelly Bellies and a logoed paper hat to wear during the tour. Jelly Belly is open every day from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and though there is no production on the weekends, videos are shown instead. The gift shop sells not only standard flavors but odd ones as well, like buttered popcorn and toasted marshmallow. Look for the two-pound bags of Belly Flops, oddly shaped production mistakes.

John Deere
Harvester Works
1100 13th Avenue
East Moline, IL 61244
(800) 765-9588
www.johndeere.com
The harvester is one of those machines that revolutionized farming and made possible America’s tremendous production of grain and corn. John Deere is the world’s largest producer of agricultural equipment and there are several factories assembling their products throughout America’s heartland (including the John Deere Pavilion also in Moline, which houses many of John Deere’s early products and historical memorabilia in the 14,000-square-foot facility). Blacksmith John Deere started his company in 1837, and he would be shocked by the almost futuristic advances his company has made in the assembly procedure. Visitors will see robots welding sub assemblies, laser cutting steel and electrical charges (instead of sprayers) applying the world-famous green paint. The tour of the 250-acre facility is guided by a John Deere-factory retiree and guests witness several sub-assembly stations before seeing the final assembly line where the massive harvesters are completed.

The tour is free and the factory tours are Monday through Friday, 8:00 am, 10:00 am and 12:30 pm; reservations are required at least one month in advance. The gift shop is located next to the John Deere Pavilion in Moline, also a must see.

 Kellogg’s Cereal City USA
171 West Michigan Avenue
Battle Creek, MI 49017
(616) 962-6230
www.kelloggscerealcityusa.org
Twelve years after the Kellogg Company discontinued its popular plant tours in 1986, the Heritage Center Foundation open this 45,000-square-foot facility to celebrate the vast history of the world’s most famous breakfast food. This tour was named by the Discovery Channel as the second best factory tour for kids. On the simulated cereal production line, it is explained to visitors how the grit—the heart of a corn kernel—becomes a flattened corn flake. Learn the complicated process of creating the flakes from ears of corn by visiting each step along the line. A special treat for visitors is the historical timeline’s old-time nickelodeon theater which shows short videos of the early history of Battle Creek, the Battle Creek Sanitarium and the local cereal boom. In the Cereal City cinema, watch as Bob Keeshan (played Captain Kangaroo) narrate a film about Kellogg’s history of marketing and advertising through the decades, as well as how the Kellogg Company developed the Saturday morning television for children and shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Monkees.” Finish the tour with a Froot Loop sundae and a free sample box of cereal.

For adults, the tour is $7.95 and for seniors (65 and older), $6.50, but guests are asked to call for tour times and foundation hours as they change by the seasons. The gift shop offers over 500 items, including clothing, collectibles, kitchen items and guest’s picture on an 18-ounce-box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.