Free Factory Tour at Hammond's Candies in Denver, Colorado

Today I find myself in a hotel room, with five busy children ages ten and under, and a lot to do: packing and laundry and organizing for a continuation of our summer road trip. I need something for them to do that will capture imagination and we are museum-ed out and can't do anything that will cause us to be wet and muddy as we have plans later.

In the "2008 Denver & Colorado Official Visitors Guide" in our hotel lobby I see Hammond's Candies Factory Tours listed in the "Free Tours" section. Ah hah! I now have a plan. It is easy to convince my busy bodies to behave a bit so we can go to a Candy Factory.

We arrive a little before 1 PM and there are school children hopping off a bus. As we enter we are greeted and asked if we are interested in a factory tour. The next one will be at 1:30 and we are given brown stickers to identify which tour group we will be with. We are invited to sample free candy, purchase ice cream or explore the candy store as we wait.

We decide the candy store is the place to be. WOW! Beautiful, colorful, old fashioned candy is every place! We find a lovely gift basket arranged in a miniature picnic basket, all red, white and blue candies. Perfect for the hostess we will be staying with in a few nights. There are wonderful carnival sized lollipops, and bags of candy everywhere and we are all entranced. In a corner we find bags of "broken candy" for sale for $5.00. There are also seasonal candies, now "out of season" discounted. We are assured hard candy lasts and lasts and we buy some to take home. The very friendly sales girl takes our bag and holds it behind the counter so we can enjoy our tour.

The tour is simple. We begin with a video that demonstrates what we will see in the factory. Hammond's was created in 1920 and candy makers still mix batches, cool candy, "build candy," pull and cut candy by hand. The candy canes are crooked by hand. The lollipops are coiled into that wonderful circle by hand. Amazing!

Once the video is over we enter the factory. On one side of the wall is where we stand while our guide explains what we are seeing. There are windows and on the other side is what appears to be the entire Hammond's Candies Factory. There we can see two women working at the ribbon machine, a machine made in 1800 something! There is a man pulling and cutting candy cane candy into sticks and a woman working with him hooking the canes. At the table right in front of the window two men are building a hard candy. It is red and dark red. They pull it and shape it flat, cut it, pull the other color, place them together, pull some more, cut and keep going. In front of us a candy takes shape. When they are satisfied a huge block of pink candy goes in the middle and gets wrapped up. Then they move off to a new station to pull it. In the back of the factory we can see a white candy on a machine, the name of which I forgot, that is winding the candy like yarn and adding air to it.

We move down a very short hall to the other side of the factory. Here candies are being wrapped and packaged. In the hall way there are machines collected from candy factories all around. I am interested in a "hard candy cutter" which has a variety of shapes, little gnomes, pears, raspberry, in a hard metal mold which presumably was used to make all those shapes.

While I am checking out these machines our guide is amusing us with tales in the wrapping room. She tried to work in the wrapping room at some point and she tells us it was an experience out of an "I Love Lucy" show. She couldn't keep up with the candies coming along the conveyor belt, and they brought her a tray as they can't stop the belt and she still couldn't keep up. Our guide was very amusing.

While we were watching the packers one of them came out with a tray of samples. Chocolate covered raspberry cream filled something or other. And then another tray came out, caramel covered marshmallows. And there were hard candies to sample as well. Wow! Had we not already made our purchase we no doubt would have bought a lot more!!!

Interesting to note: Martha Stewart candy canes are made by Hammond's Candies. Also good to know, custom orders are welcome! Too bad we can't order them for my sister's wedding, but I don't think two weeks is quite enough time. Still...

As I type this the four older kids are pretending to make candy in the hotel. They have paper hats on their heads from Hammond's Candies, one of them is kneading and folding his sweatshirt, one is taking orders, one is mixing sugar, corn syrup and water. Good thing it is all pretend. They keep reminding each other of things they learned, "remember, you have to pull it and stretch it." "remember, she said they took turns at each station." "remember..." The oldest was impressed that she got to visit the only Hammond's Candies Factory in existence. It isn't big, but it is the only one!

Hammond's sells wholesale to specialty stores. Our guide did say candy could be bought on-line as well. The kids and I have already agreed that our new tradition is to order Christmas Candies from Hammond's.