Herrs Snack Factory Tour

by Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger

13 Jan 2007 06:14 AM

In a previous blog, Factory Tours Are Fun And Free!, I talked about how friendly factory tours are for both families and their budgets. I am such a big fan of factory tours for their fun, frugality and educational value, that I will be highlighting some of the best tours around.

I'll be asking your help to tell us all about your favorite factory tours.

For this blog, I thought I would start with my home state of Pennsylvania and highlight a tour that my own family really enjoyed. I am talking about the Herrs Snack Factory Tour. This factory tour, located in Nottingham, PA is absolutely free. You can watch potatoes turn into chips, a cheese curl get its cheesy bath and more.

One of the nice things about this tour is that it is all genuine. While some tours set up fake equipment or micro-versions of their operations for tours, the Herrs factory lets you see the real deal.

My oldest, Andrew, loves designing and building machines. He was really impressed with the machine that makes potato chips. Specifically, he enjoyed learning all about the "chip reader," a part of the machine that visually scans green or dark brown potato chips and shifts the baddies off to the reject pile.

We all really enjoyed watching a potato go from hard round vegetable to yummy chip in a matter of minutes, and the experience of eating hot salted chips that we just witnessed being made was hard to beat.

After the tour, we had the opportunity to browse the factory store. It was like a mini adventure with bags of snacks that didn't make it to retail. Oh, they had the regular stuff there, too, but it was much more fun to think of trying nacho chips that had exotic seasonings, or bags of popcorn that had been so overfilled, they were threatening to burst. There were deep discounts up to 75% off for the adventurous.

Want to schedule a tour? Here is some basic information from their website.

Monday - Thursday 9 AM to 12 PM and 1 PM to 3 PM Fridays 9 AM to 12 PM (cannot guarantee production running on Friday)

All tours take approximately one hour

When scheduling, please indicate the time of day (on the hour) you wish to take your tour

For more information, you can call 1-800-63-SNACK or visit their website.

What is your favorite factory tour?

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Factory Tours Are Fun And Free!

Learn more about Mary Ann Romans

Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat.

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