Item from the Past: Jelly Belly

January 20, 2002

Haven’t been to downtown Kenosha lately, but I understand there’s been some retail redevelopment there in the last four years, and well as lakefront beautification.

Today we drove to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to visit the Jelly Belly factory, or rather the Jelly Belly warehouse, a state-of-the-art distribution center that also gives tours. Their candy is overpriced, and the shop attached to the warehouse confirmed it.

The tour consisted of a ride aboard a train of little cars driven by an elderly fellow who narrated at each stop, mostly while we looked at videos that illustrated some step in the manufacture of the billions of jelly beans that the company makes each year. For some reason, the microphones weren’t working very well, and so we could only hear about half of what he said. An impaired virtual tour of sorts, then: seeing representations of an activity that goes on elsewhere, and not quite hearing the narrative. I would have preferred a tour of the actual factory, which is actually in the Chicago area, but Lilly didn’t seem to mind.

At certain other stops, we saw artworks – graphic designs made from Jelly Bellies, usually portraits of people, including the man who did the most for Jelly Belly sales, Ronald Reagan. More enigmatically, the Jelly Belly portrait galley included Elvis Presley, Margaret Thatcher and Amelia Earhart.

We headed to downtown Kenosha for lunch, arriving at 1:30, too late for to eat at a recommended spot called Frank’s. Closed at 1. Sp we went down the street to a place called Three Coins. Not bad. Yuriko had shrimp, I had liver. Downtown Kenosha is a bit tired, suffering Wal-Mart on the Interstate syndrome, but there are still a handful of interesting antique stores around, including one we nosed around in. The nearby lakefront will be lovely come spring and summer. We ought to come back to see.