Before you load up on Halloween candy this week, consider where one of America's best-known candies is made. Jelly Belly jelly beans come from Fairfield, in Solano County, and the company lets the public inside. Its visitor page lists the address as 1 Jelly Belly Lane in Fairfield, with a factory tour where visitors can see "how we craft the perfect jelly bean." There is also a visitor center with the Jelly Belly Café and the Jelly Belly Candy Store. Tours are booked through the company's website.

A candy family's westward move

The company's roots are in the Midwest. Wikipedia says German immigrant Gustav Goelitz started a confectionery business in Belleville, Illinois, in 1869, and the family company later made candy corn and other mellowcreme candies. His son Herman Goelitz moved west to start his own business, the Herman Goelitz Candy Company, which settled in Oakland in 1924. In the 1960s it branched into jelly beans, and in 1965 it developed a small, intensely flavored Mini Jelly Bean with flavor in both the center and the shell.

The governor's candy jar

Ronald Reagan had quit smoking and taken up candy instead. Wikipedia says he first tried the company's mini jelly beans in 1969, when Herman Rowland, Herman Goelitz's grandson, sent them to him. As governor in 1973, Reagan wrote to Rowland that "we can hardly start a meeting or make a decision without passing around the jar of jelly beans."

The birth of Jelly Belly

In 1976, candy distributor David Klein worked with Rowland on a jelly bean made with natural flavoring, built on the Mini Jelly Bean idea, and hired the Goelitz company to make it. Klein named it Jelly Belly as a tribute to the blues musician Lead Belly. The first flavors were Very Cherry, Tangerine, Lemon, Green Apple, Grape, Licorice, Root Beer and Cream Soda. The beans became famous nationally in 1981, when Reagan's fondness for them became public, and in 1983 Reagan sent them aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, making them the first jelly beans in space.

The company today

The company renamed itself Jelly Belly Candy Company in 2001. Ferrara Candy Company completed its purchase of Jelly Belly in late 2023. Wikipedia reports that in February 2026, Ferrara laid off 69 Jelly Belly corporate employees at the Fairfield campus as part of consolidating corporate operations at its Chicago headquarters. Wikipedia lists the company as based in Fairfield, with a second manufacturing plant in North Chicago, Illinois.