Occassionally on TV we see a show showing how certain candies or snacks are made, and sometimes they mention that the factory has tours for the public. They look cool, and we’d like to see some in person. (I’ve been on a couple of brewery tours, but that’s about it.)
So what cool “open to the public” factory tours are out there?
I’m particularly interested in the Chicago area and the midwest, but feel free to jump in with any place you’d care to mention.
The Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, California. I must’ve been a gazillion times on school tours as a kid, but it’s always a fun tour.
Happen to be in the SF Bay Area and want to see how cars are made? Check out the NUMMI factory tour in Fremont, CA.
http://www.nummi.com/tours.php
I did the tour and it was pretty interesting.
Here’s an overview of who NUMMI is…
New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.(NUMMI) is the pioneering joint venture of General Motors Corporation and Toyota Motor Corporation. Established in Fremont, California, in 1984, NUMMI helped change the automobile industry by introducing the Toyota Production System and a teamwork-based working environment to the United States.
Today, NUMMI has grown to become a company of 5,440 team members who produce three award-winning vehicles: Toyota Corolla, Toyota Tacoma and Pontiac Vibe.
Battle Creek Michigan and the Kellogg plant is a fun tour. It’s not tremendously far from you. We lived in the Chicago area and had a cottage in southern Michigan. We used to take guests on that tour on rainy days.
AC Spark Plug in Flint, MI - wait, no that is closed.
Buick City in Flint, MI - wait, no closed and demolished.
OK - I got nothing…
I’ve been to both the Jelly Belly factory and to Kellogg’s Cereal City, and enjoyed them both.
The Boeing Assembly Plant in Everett, WA is incredibly cool.
The Louisville Slugger Factory in (you guessed it!) Louisville, KY is fun even if you’re not a baseball fan, and needless to say, lots of fun if you are.
There’s a kazoo factory near Buffalo, NY, that’s fun.
For my upcoming summer trip, I have plans to visit the Corvette Assembly Plant in Bowling Green, KY and the Harley-Davidson Factory in Kansas City, MO. The cool factor on both of those has to be pretty high.
If you go with the right people, the World of Coke in Atlanta can be entertaining. Once.
You can still do the Rouge Factory tour thru the Henry Ford Museum. It’s nowhere near as cool, or comprehensive, as it was back in ye olden days, but still a pretty nifty tour.
Jack Daniel’s in Lynchburg, TN is really great, but no free drinks (besides coffee or lemonade), but they let you stick your fingers in the mash and taste it. The Bacardi tour in Puerto Rico is very lame, but you get two free drinks.
I haven’t been there (yet) but the Budweiser plant in St. Louis, Mo. has tours, and I think you get to meet the Clydesdales at the end.
Go to Vermont.
First you can see Ben a Jerry’s ice cream. You get free samples, and you can visit the Graveyard of Defunct Flavors (No joke)!
http://www.benjerry.com/our_company/about_us/tours/
You can also go to The Vermont Teddy Bear Factory and take their tour
http://gonewengland.about.com/cs/vtsightseeing/a/aavtbear.htm
Miller still does brewery tours in Milwaukee. My dad said they give a couple of drink tickets to all of the guests at the end of the tour. Go with someone who doesnt drink beer and you can use their tickets.
Now that you are sloshed, head over to the Harley Davidson factory and check out where they make the motorcycles.
If you haven’t had enough, you can drive south to Peoria and go see take a tour of the Caterpillar factory.
Or since the OP is going to be in the midwest, I would suggest the Jelly Belly distribution center in Kenosha.
I once stopped at a facility that was mentioned in the paper and simply asked for a tour. WOW - It was a small company and the President took me on a 3 hour tour (no Gilligan jokes please). It was all high tech machining (like NASA stuff) and we ended up talking in his office for over an hour about his days as an SR-71 pilot.
So I guess my point is that even companies that don’t give tours will give tours when asked.
Celestial Seasonings (the tea company) in Boulder, CO gives free tours. It’s fun, once. The Mint Room is almost painful- very strong. Clears your sinuses, though.
I keep meaning to see if I can get a tour at the cidery that makes K cider. It’s in Sebastopol California. Of course, now that I live umpteen million miles away, that’s not as likely. Dang it.
Anheuser Busch has free tours in various breweries around the country. The bottling section is cool, and they have horsies.
In general, brewery tours tend to be a bit dull. It really only takes a few guys doing the same stuff that the home brewers do… they just do it in much, much larger tanks.
Years ago I went to Monterrey (Mexico, a very industry-oriented city) with an American friend, traveling on the cheap. That’s a town where every single waiter suffers from an interesting hearing condition: they cannot understand the words “Corona” or “Coronita.”
The Cervecería Cuahutémoc, in Monterrey, makes every other Mexican beer you may think of. We visited it the first day we were in town and sampled two different beers with every meal except breakfast for the rest of the week. I’ve been to other breweries but enjoyed that one specially; the stories of how each brand came to be, specially. Some of them, like XX (Dos Equis) or Cerveza de Navidad (Christmas beer, which is actually different every year) were supposed to be a one-time event but were so succesful they stayed.
As part of my engineering courses, we went on a number of factory tours, some that were normally open to the public, others that weren’t. All my experiences were in York, PA.
A local tool & die shop was interesting since a classmate was employed there and was able to show us around, a high precision plastic injection molding manufacturer was good, the wire pulling factory was cool too. Harley was good too, but you can tell it is aimed towards the general public.
The foundry, however was one of the coolest things I have ever seem in person. We went in the evening since that is when they actually poured their castings. Seeing the scrap metal getting melted down and then poured into ladles and poured into the pressed sand molds all the way through seeing the still warm parts getting the flashing ground off. If at all possible I would go to a foundry.
Cereal City in Battle Creek has shut down. I don’t believe Kellogg’s offers any tours now.
The Rouge Plant in Dearborn is pretty nifty, though you have to sit through some boring pre-shows to get to the good stuff. You can see them build F150s. It is a pale shadow of the old tour, where you got to go through their steel mill as well as watch final assembly.