Blue Bell

If you haven't tasted Blue Bell ice cream, you are missing out! Ok, so maybe its more of an iconic thing to me than anything but on our way home from Houston last week we decided to take a detour and visit the factory in Brehnam Texas.

We learned all sorts of interesting things like they are the 3rd most popular brand of ice cream sold in the US (pretty amazing as its only available in parts of 20 states), they have their own in-house bakery (for cookies in their cookies and cream etc), they only know what flavors they will be making about a week in advance as the flavors available are entirely based off of purchases (aside from seasonal products).  They have several nozzles feed into one carton and that is how they get even portions of different flavors (such as the great divide and Neapolitan) and we also learned the reason the ice cream is packaged then conveyored upside down is to create a seal with the lid to preserve freshness as well as reduce product cost (no plastic wrap needed).  Employees really can eat all the free ice cream they want.  Hence one of their many slogans "we eat all we can, and sell the rest".  We were surprised the tour took us by offices, locker rooms and the employee lunch room.

 Too bad Rylee missed out. We brought her back a souvenir anyway.

We had our included 'scoop' of ice cream and were back on the road.  It was fun and we're glad we stopped, but its not really worth the trip just for that.

And just for fun, my top 5 flavors are: Pistachio Almond, Summer Strawberry Pie, Snickerdoodle, Cookie Dough and Butter Crunch

Come visit, I'll stock the freezer.