Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
FACTORY TOURS IN NEARBY BERKELEY & FAIRFIELD
Since Ghirardelli doesn't offer factory tours in town, the best a tourist can hope
for—and it's still pretty darn good, chocolate-wise—is a trip to
Scharffen Berger
Chocolate Maker
(914 Heinz Ave., at 8th, Berkeley;
%
510/981-4066; www.
scharffenberger.com; Mon-Sat 1-6pm, Sun 10am-5pm),
just over the water in
Berkeley. Although its manufacture is a complicated process involving lots of spe-
cialized equipment, you'll be impressed by how homegrown the outfit really
looks, and the aromas just may drive you insane. The factory, essentially a few big
rooms with personal-feeling redbrick walls, prides itself on making chocolate in
the old style; in fact, one of its principal machines (the one that draws out the
cocoa butter from the beans) is almost 100 years old and is nearly identical to one
used as far back as the 1800s. If you're lucky, you'll get to witness the most mouth-
watering part of the process: when the liquid chocolate is poured into the molds
in a final step. Or perhaps you'll find the factory store to be the best moment,
when you can load up on sweets. Don't show up at the factory without a reserva-
tion, and wear closed-toed shoes. The factory is about a 15-minute walk west of
the Ashby BART station. Kids have to be 10 or older. If all this is too much effort
(or temptation) for you, there is a simple sales shop available at the Ferry
Building, which is at the foot of Market Street. The only other Scharffen Berger
store is in New York City.
The
Jelly Belly
factory (1 Jelly Belly Lane, Fairfield;
%
707/428-2838; www.
jellybelly.com; free admission; 9am-4pm)
produces two things en masse: jelly
beans and tours for visitors like you. Schoolchildren pour in by the busload, snack
on jelly-bean-shaped pizza in the large cafeteria, and then load up on a sugar high
that no amount of cajoling can assuage. If you can handle the intensity that a jelly
bean factory whips up among the knee-highs, you'll surely find a visit fun. Tours,
which require no reservations, go in batches every 15 minutes and follow a 40-
minute route along enclosed, elevated walkways over the factory rooms. If you
don't have your own hat to wear, you'll be given a cute paper souvenir one—and
required to wear it. Below, you see the beans being shaped, batched, moved, and
sorted, and all around, you'll smell the sugary goodness of the flavor in produc-
tion (the last time I was there, I got lucky and the aroma of the day was the but-
tered-popcorn flavor, which is surprisingly delicious). Along the way, short videos
that elucidate and illuminate the process, and give you further vantage points into
it, are shown. Guides are usually just button-pushers/babysitters and can only
answer the barest inquiries.
In San Francisco, Ronald Reagan is known for two things: looking the other
way during the AIDS crisis and loving Jelly Belly beans (licorice was his favorite).
This is the happier aspect to dwell on. There are lots of reminders of the bygone
actor president, not least of which are portraits of him and Nancy in what are
surely, by now, rotten beans, and a case full of memorabilia including letters and
souvenirs from his inaugurals. You'll need the willpower of the pope to avoid tak-
ing home any of the little morsels; everyone who takes the tour receives a 2-ounce
mixed packet of beans as a gift, and that just starts most people on a buying binge
at the factory store, where every flavor from sour cherry or Dr. Pepper to pencil
shavings or boogers (really—they make a line on a Harry Potter theme) is avail-
able. Prices are $2 for a quarter-pound—not cheap when you consider the mass
