We made a point of not staying out too late at the Church Street Marketplace on Friday night because we knew we had to be back towards Stowe, VT on Saturday morning for the Ben & Jerry's factory tour. If you missed that post about Church Street Marketplace, you can find it here.
The Ben & Jerry's factory is actually just south of Stowe, VT in the town of Waterbury. Once you take your exit off the expressway, it's just a short drive up the road and you will find the factory entrance on the left hand side of the road.
It was a cold and rainy day when we pulled into the parking lot at the factory. It is quite colorful and we discovered during the tour that they have a larger factory at another location, but this one does still produce some of the ice cream that ends up in stores.
The building itself sits up on the top of a hill from where the parking lot is and it is quite colorful. They also have a couple little stations that you can stop and and buy souvenirs or check things out.
I would imagine this outdoor patio area would be a pleasant place to hang out if the weather had been a little better for us. They also have an outdoor scoop window where you can buy ice cream. The queue was empty when we showed up, but by the time we left, there were probably twenty to thirty people waiting in line to get ice cream.
As I said, it was pretty dead outside all of the buildings when we showed up. I don't know if it is because we were one of the first tour groups, the fact that it was raining, or maybe because of the time of year we visited. Honestly, I'm not that mad that it wasn't super crowded.
The inside of the facility was just as colorful as you would expect. They had plenty of Ben & Jerry's gear you could buy in the gift shop, but I really wasn't interested in any of that.
They had this thing against the wall where you could see how many pints tall you are. There are zero pictures of me standing next to it in case you happened to wonder. The Ben & Jerry's tour was probably the cheapest thing we did on our trip to Vermont. It was only $6 per person and it lasted about half an hour long.
Our tour guide was quite good, but he talked kind of like he was a surfer guy from the coast working there for the summer. The employees are encouraged to rely heavily on the cow and dairy puns, so that got a little old after a bit. Actually, the puns weren't bad, but the fact that they constantly apologized for making them made it 100x worse. If you are going to do it, at least commit to it and don't apologize for it!
In the waiting area they have a projector and a screen that showed different fun facts and trivia about the Ben & Jerry's brand as well as how the ice cream is made.
The first part of the tour takes you to a room with a movie that you have to watch first. I have noticed a lot of places do that these days. I guess it cuts down on overhead or tour guides going off script... It had some interesting facts about the brand and we also learned about how involved the founders are in social justice. Some people might say the Ben & Jerry's brand in general is very "woke". How ever you feel about that, their ice cream is still delicious.
They prohibited photos to be taken through most of the facility, but the opening photo is one of the few I was allowed to take. The Flavor Lab is now a tasting room, but originally it was the kitchen where Ben and Jerry created all their flavors.
Rumor has it Jerry doesn't have a very good sense of taste which is why they committed to including huge chunks of stuff in their flavors.
This was also in the tasting room and it was a preview of some of the new flavors that they have recently released. On our tour we got a free sample of cookie dough chunks and a free sample of butterscotch blast which is an exclusive flavor you can only get in their ice cream shop locations. You will never see that one on store shelves.
In case you think Ben & Jerry's is just a US thing, this is a list of countries that they distribute ice cream to. Pretty impressive. It actually looks like Africa is the only place Ben & Jerry's doesn't have a footprint.
As I said, for six bucks a piece, this tour was very much worth it. It didn't take up your whole day and it gave you some free goodies as well. After our tour was over, we decided to drive through the small town of Waterbury and check it out.
As you can see, the mist/fog on the mountainsides made it a pretty picturesque drive.
As you can see, Waterbury is a quaint little town with lots of interesting places to offer. Like the surrounding area, they have really leaned into the farm to table idea and there were several restaurants that had been quite highly rated according to Google Maps.
Instead, we decided to head back to Burlington so we could try to catch the Ohio State/Penn State football game on a big screen.
With that decided, we turned the car around and started heading back West towards Burlington. The rain got progressively worse as we drove closer to Lake Champlain and by the time we got back to Burlington it was outright pouring.
Of course, being the middle of the day on Saturday, the city was packed with vehicles and we had to park a full couple of blocks away from our agreed upon destination.
That's a story for another post though...
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