AS SEEN ON GREAT AMERICAN RAIL JOURNEYS BBC2 with Michael Portillo and to my great satisfaction.

If you happen to find yourself between San Francisco and Sacramento on the I 80 make a stop at the Jelly Belly Factory. Factory Tours of Jelly Belly, Fairfield, CA.

Tours are free and you get to see the in depth process of how these little beans of joy are produced. Don’t be embarrassed by the headgear that is offered to wear. My daughter point blank refused to put it on until I told her that she wasn’t going to do the tour without it. There was only going to be one winner that day!

Of course there is a store to stock up on your favourites as well as bags of rejects called ‘belly flops’. The café even serves bean shaped pizzas. My favourite memory is the works of art entirely made of different flavoured and coloured jelly beans, such as a portrait of Jelly Beans’s most favourite consumer, President Ronald Regan.
Everyone gets a small bag of jelly bellies to keep as a souvenir, we still have one that was never opened from 2001. I doubt I will open it now though!