Watch It Made Blog

Those of us who have ever spent an afternoon baking cookies must feel awed by the sheer scale of the pastry-making operation at Mrs. Fields Gifts in Salt Lake City. Located near the company's headquarters, the facility makes, packs, and ships gift boxes of Mrs. Fields cookies in astronomical quantities. Running through 2.1 million pounds of cookie dough annually, the factory shifts into top gear during November and December, when holiday demand accounts for up to 75% of the yearly business. During this period, the number of staff swells from 35 to 300, the facility operates from 5:00 AM until 2:00 AM, and the bakery may churn out as many as 35,000 packages of cookies per day. (The holiday season of 2011 has proved to be so busy that Mrs. Fields has suspended its tour until after Christmas, but after then you can make a tour reservation at the company's website.)

Guided tours of the gifting facility take you into the center of the operation. You start with a video and a brief history of the company, which began with the single small cookie store that Debbi Fields founded during 1977 in Palo Alto, California. After this introduction, you head toward the bakery, a sizeable space about as large as a basketball court. There are no passive viewing windows here: you don a hairnet and step right into the action. The strong aroma of cookies that greeted you when you set foot in the building now surges and fills your head with the bliss of baking pastry as staff members deftly prepare trays of cookies to be whisked into ovens.

The packaging lines are in the bakery too. Gift batches of freshly baked cookies are set in colorful tins or decorative baskets, complete with hand-tied bows. You then follow their progress to the warehouse and shipping dock, where gift packages are sent all over the United States. Perhaps the most amazing thing here is the giant storage freezer. At 20,000 cubic feet, it can keep a city's worth of pastry fresh until shipping. Tours end at the outlet store, where you can find gift packages of cookies made right in the bakery.

This tour will be featured in the next edition of Watch It Made in the U.S.A. Meanwhile, you can read about other confectionary tours in the current edition of the book.

We always keep an eye out for good teddy-bear tours. (That's just how we roll.) Over the past couple of months, we've been fortunate enough to come across two factory tours showcasing the manufacture of teddy bears and other stuffed animals.

In the small town of Chelsea, Michigan, you can tour the operations of Chelsea Teddy Bear Company & Toy Museum. Excitingly, here you get to hang out with no fewer than 100,000 teddy bears. While most may be boxed and ready for shipping, about that many teddy bears are typically living in the company's warehouse at any given moment. However, off-duty bears are not always idle. In July 2011, the company achieved a Guinness World Record by creating the largest ever teddy-bear mosaic: a giant circle of bears, arranged to show the panda symbol of the World Wildlife Fund. This achievement broke the prior record, which Chelsea Teddy Bear had also set with a similar feat involving a huge peace symbol of teddies. For photos of both events, see the company's Facebook page.

A world away, in Phoenix, Arizona, is the factory and retail store of the Stuffington Bear Company. While most plush toys in the United States are still imported, Stuffington is a glowing exception. Unusually in our age of technology and globalization, this small company makes its products almost entirely by hand from materials made solely in the U.S. Its handiwork includes not just teddy bears but an extensive zoological range: monkeys, elephants, camels, rabbits, coyotes, owls, eagles, penguins, frogs—even the horned toad lizards of the Arizona desert. On a tour of the manufacturing space, you observe the diligent, focused work of a 13-person team capable of cranking out 5,000 plush toys in just one week.

These tours will both be featured in the next edition of Watch It Made in the U.S.A. Meanwhile, you can read about other teddy-bear factory tours in the current edition of the book.

July is National Hot Dog Month. We don't know why (the dog days of summer?) but we do know you can tour the factory in Chicago where Vienna Beef makes its famous hot dogs and other sausages. Held at the company headquarters (2501 N. Damen Avenue), tours run on Wednesday mornings from 10:00 to 11:00. Unfortunately, each tour can take only six people, and there is usually a waiting list—all the more reason to book your place now. You can request a tour at the Vienna Beef website.

Want to do some homework before you go? See the website of the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, where you can learn the truth about the manufacture of the mighty hot dog. You may also be surprised by the list of the U.S. cities where the most hot dogs are eaten. (Surprisingly, Chicago is not top dog.)

While you're in Chicago, you may want to visit some of the other hot-dog makers that abound in the city. For a full listing, see a recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times.

When phenylethylamine, a neurotransmitter that fosters the euphoric feelings of love, was discovered in cocoa beans, many people believed that the physiological source of our passionate love for chocolate had finally been traced. Biochemists have since refuted the significance of this link, but the cultural importance of chocolate in romantic love remains undisputed. In other words, gentlemen: on Valentine's Day, if you haven't gotten her roses, you'd better have chocolates.

You can double the sweetness of your Valentine's Day by touring one of the many chocolate factories that open their doors to visitors. Free samples of freshly made artisan chocolate are an essential part of the experience. To get you started, we present five factory tours in various cities around the US.

Anthony Thomas Chocolates in Columbus, Ohio, actually designed its factory with visitor tours in mind: you view (and smell) the chocolate-making from a catwalk suspended above the manufacturing floor. Eight production lines make 25,000 pounds of chocolate during every shift.

Near Chicago, Long Grove Confectionary Company, featured elsewhere on our website, conducts factory tours at its facility in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. While tours (normally $2 per person) are free on Saturday, the company can't guarantee production hours on Saturdays, so it is perhaps best to visit during the work week.

Mast Brothers Chocolate in Brooklyn, New York, gives a tour of its elite chocolate-making operations at 1 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. While this costs $9.99 per person, an unusually high price in the world of factory tours, the rewards are obvious: "The finest chocolate we have ever tasted," according to The Chocolate Society of London (who should know).

In Frankfort, Kentucky, Rebecca Ruth Candies combines chocolate with the unusual twist of bourbon. You'll want to get there before Feb. 10, as tours don't run during the busy production period before Valentine's Day. This is another tour featured on our website.

Launched in late 2010, the tour of TCHO at Pier 17 in San Francisco promises entertainment as well as confectionery with engaging tour guides and an opulent tasting room. True to its roots in Silicon Valley, the company brings technological wizardry to the manufacture of chocolate.

Chocolate factories abound in most parts of the country, so there is probably at least one near your home. For many other chocolate tours, see our book Watch It Made in the U.S.A. Happy Valentine's Day!