Angell & Phelps Chocolate Factory

So there is a chocolate factory. Only 30 minutes from our house. And they offer free tours. How could you resist that??!! I've been dying to go, but I always remember it when we have other things planned. Friday turned out to be the perfect day to try it out. They offer tours at the top of every hour and you don't have to call ahead, you just show up. I wasn't sure what to expect when we got there, but it turned out to be a very large store that uses the back area for the chocolate/candy area. Definitely not as industrial as I imagined. There is a long hallway at the back of the store front that has windows so you can see all the workers making the treats. It was so interesting! The windows were too high for James to see, so we had to carry him the entire time:

This is what we saw at the first window. A bunch of chocolate flip flop lollipops set out to cool! James laughed when he saw these, he thought they were the coolest thing ever. The tour guide told us all about the machinery they used, some of them were antiques from when the store opened in 1925!

Here is one of the workers making dark chocolate covered popcorn. We noticed that all of the workers wore long sleeves, long pants, and thick shoes. The tour guide said they keep the candy making room at a cool 65 degrees!

At the second window, they showed us their conveyor belt system for coating their candies/treats in chocolate. At the moment they were making chocolate covered potato chips! One worker had the job of picking up every single individual potato chip after it got a coating of chocolate and rubbing it all around to make sure chocolate got into every groove (he looked really bored):

More molded chocolates:

The potato chips coming out at the end of the line:

After the tour you got to pick two candies from the sample tray. Yum! I got a chocolate covered potato chip, which was good but you couldn't really tell that it was a potato chip. It just tasted crunchy. James chose a nut/chocolate candy and one of the foil wrapped chocolates.

Digging in to the chocolate!

This the face he made when we asked him to smile:

We laughed at the first face and got him to laugh too :)

They also sold chocolate covered bacon and white chocolate eggs. It was so strange we had to buy it:

It was really neat to hear the history of the store and to see how passionate and friendly the staff was about their chocolates. Now I know where to go when I need some really good candy!