HOUSTON -- Move over, Willy Wonka. How would your kids like a tour of a chocolate factory? Or, forget the kids—how about you?!
KHOU 11 News anchor Shern-Min Chow and her son took the tour. It was pretty sweet, but the best part? Visiting Kegg’s Candies is free.
Inside the factory, huge mixing machines blend all the secret ingredients to perfection for candies, confections and chocolates.
From cooling pecan crisps that must be handled just right, to macaroons that have to be carefully dunked in chocolate, to the faucet that pours out chocolate to coat candy centers -- it’s a sweet-lover’s paradise.
"Who gets to lick the machine when you’re done?" Chow jokingly asked owner Carl Bartuch.
"A lot of customers have volunteered to do that," he replied.
The small businessman is kind of like Houston’s Willy Wonka, which got Chow’s 10-year-old son to thinking …
"Which came first, your factory or the Willy Wonka factory?" he asked.
"Believe it or not, the Kegg’s Factory. Mr. Kegg founded the Kegg’s factory in the spring of 1946," Bartuch said with a smile.
That was well before either Hollywood movie. In 2004, Bartuch bought the Kegg’s factory and redesigned it for retail and tours. But it did come at a price.
"When I built the factory about three years ago, I was about 20 pounds lighter," he said.
Kegg’s is Houston’s only full-line chocolate factory, and they make or package just about everything: mints, jelly beans, lemon drops, licorice drops, orange slices, gummy worms, gummy bears, gummy fish, candy corn, chocolates, creme centers, nuts, caramels, chews, and dark and white chocolate. That prompted another kid question.
"Is white chocolate really chocolate?" Chow’s son asked.
Alas, Bartuch replied, "White chocolate is not really chocolate."
It’s actually just cocoa butter and sugar.
They make about 200 different types of confections and about 400 different shapes of chocolates at Kegg’s, including custom-ordered designs.
But while "I Love Lucy" famously taught us that some jobs are best left to the professionals, Chow’s son still had to ask…
"You have any jobs open?"
But Bartuch wasn’t fooled.
"I think there is an age requirement by the state," he said with a smile.
If you’d like to tour the chocolate factory, click here. The tours are free, but the chocolate isn’t. That, you have to buy.
