Vermont: Waterbury – Ben & Jerry’s Factory

We first visited the Ben & Jerry’s factory in 2007 as a family, that is with exception of Karen who had to return to the UK for her mother’s funeral. So, 14-years later we made it back minus the children who have since grown up and left home. We have never quite grown up ourselves, so it still felt natural for us to make the pilgrimage to the home of Ben & Jerry’s. Since our last visit we had become vegan, but luckily there are some wonderful vegan ice cream makers around – including Ben & Jerry’s.

Last time around there were tours of the factory and production line, which is always fun to show the kids. The most memorable part of our tour was looking through the observation window at a conveyer belt bringing pots filled with ice cream to a packing station. Something went horribly wrong and suddenly pots of ice cream started spilling off the end of the conveyer belt and crashing to the floor. Ice cream was everywhere. Before somebody realised what was going on and pressed the emergency stop button at least two-dozen pots lay on the ground their contents laid bare on the ground in a sticky mess. Sadly, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the tours during our recent visit were not running, so instead, we went to check out the ‘Flavor Graveyard’.

The ‘Flavor Graveyard’ is set out as a traditional graveyard with individual plots and headstones, with hilarious inscriptions dedicated to all the flavours that have been killed off!