The best factory tour in the bay area is undoubtedly the Jelly Belly tour in Fairfield. You don’t need to make a reservation to take the tour. You can arrive anytime during the day. The tour is free and there is plenty of free parking. Tours start every few minutes. It is best to come on weekdays for this tour. The factory doesn’t make candy on Saturday or Sunday, so if you go on those days, you won’t actually see the candy being made. Instead you will just see a series of movies showing how the candy is made when the machines are running. I think that’s boring.

RONALD REAGAN. I can remember when Jelly Belly jelly beans were just one of many candies made by the Herman Goelitz Candy Company in Oakland. Back in the 1970s, Goelitz was a small company making all its candies in a nondescript brick building near the Oakland As stadium. All that changed when Ronald Reagan was elected president. Reagan loved Jelly Bellies, and he let everyone know it. Reagan had bowls of Jelly Bellies on the table at all his cabinet meetings. There were bowls of Jelly Bellies scattered around Air Force One. There were Jelly Bellies on the tables at White House banquets. When Ronald Reagan was shot, well-wishers sent tons – literally tons – of Jelly Bellies to the hospital where he was recuperating. Jelly Bellies became so well known and popular that Goelitz changed the name of the company to the Jelly Belly Company. There are portraits of Ronald Regan hanging on the walls at the Jelly Belly factory made out of jelly beans, tens of thousands of jelly beans. They know how much they owe to Ronald Reagan.

Jelly Belly is generous with free samples. Although this tour costs nothing,  I would put the Jelly Belly factory tour very high on my list of places to take kids visiting the bay area.