Taking a Tour of the Smarties Candy Factory

I’ve been eating Smarties candy for as long as I can remember and I always have some on hand in the house.  So last week when Collective Bias asked if I would be willing to join them on a tour of the Smarties Candy Factory, of course I said yes! I couldn’t tell Z.E.N. though because he would have wanted to come along for the tour as well!

The Smarties Candy factory is located in Union, New Jersey.  The collective Bias team was staying in NYC, so since I live in NJ we decided to meet up at the factory.

As we entered the factory, we were hit with the wonderful aroma of candy.  It’s hard to describe what it smelled like, but let’s just say that it smelled heavenly .

We were greeted by Liz Dee who is the Co-Owner and Director of Digital Media at Smarties.  Liz made us read a list of do’s and don’ts that we had to follow while on the tour, for instance, we were not allowed to wear glasses or jewelry while on the tour.

Liz provided us with a safe place to stow our belongings and then we were on our way into the factory.

As we entered the factory area, we were given hair nets to wear.  Yep, we had to wear hair nets!

Take a peek at what we saw while on the tour.

Here are a few tidbits I learned while I was on the tour.

• Smarties was founded by Liz’s Grandfather, Edward Dee.
• The name Smarties was chosen by Liz’s grandfather because he though it evoked the concept of kids being smart and he considered smart kids to be sweet things.
• They actually have two factories, the one here, in Union, New Jersey, and one in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada.
• Smarties come in 6 colors – White, Yellow, Pink, Green, Purple and Orange.
• The flavor of each color is as follows: White is orange/cream, yellow is pineapple, pink is cherry, green is strawberry, purple is grape, and orange is orange.
• The most popular color is white.
• The color combination in every roll is totally random
• White appears the least in the rolls because they want the rolls to be colorful and visually appealing.
• A roll of Smarties is only 25 calories and contains 6 grams of sugar.
• Smarties are Gluten free
• Smarties are vegan
• Smarties are Kosher

At the end of the tour, Liz brought us into a little room filled with shelves of different varieties of Smarties.

She told us we could take whatever and how many samples we wanted.  She wasn’t kidding.  It seemed like we were all a bit on the shy side in the beginning but when Liz started pulling out boxes so that we could carry our samples home, we all loosened up and started filling those boxes.

A special thank you to Liz at Smarties for allowing us to tour the facilities and for sending us off with all the sweet treats!

{2nd picture above courtesy of Jay Berg}