August 9-19, 2019

Codorus State Park

Hanover, PA

Part 3-Tours

While in the Hanover and York area we took advantage of free factory tours beginning with

the 600,000 square foot facility where the famous Utz potato chips and snacks are made.  The self-guided tour goes along a glass enclosed observation gallery that looks down on the production process from beginning to end.  At the conclusion of the tour we were each given a bag of chips.

The company was started in 1921 by Bill and Salie Utz who made the first batch of potato chips in their kitchen in Hanover.  The hand-operated equipment produced 50 pounds of potato chips per hour.  Successful sales allowed the couple to move operations to a small building in 1938.  An automatic fryer boosted production capability to 300 pounds of chips per hour.

Today, Utz Quality Foods remains family-owned.  The company’s 2500 employees make 150 million pounds of snacks in its eleven manufacturing facilities.  In addition to potato chips, Utz makes 395 different types of flavors of snacks included pretzels, cheese curls, sunflower chips, tortilla chips, popcorn, pork rinds and party mix.

We also toured Snyder’s of Hanover, an American bakery and snack food distribution company specializing in German traditional pretzels. 

Reservations were required for the Snyder’s guided tour.

The tour concludes at the factory outlet store where we proceeded to load up our cart with all kinds of goodies.  By the time we walked out of the store, our “free” tour had cost us almost $30.

The final tour we took during our stay at Codorus State Park was at the Harley Davidson Factory in York. 

 

 

The Classic Factory Tour is free of charge but does encourage making a reservation as it is a very popular tour. The tour offers a company history and factory introduction video and a view of machining, fabrication and assembly.

 

As with the other tours we took during the week no photography is allowed except in the exhibit area and gift shop.   

The noise in the climate-controlled factory was deafening so Monte asked our guide for ear plugs that did help. 

I’m not into motorcycles but did enjoy learning how the bikes are made and was very impressed with the overall cleanliness of the factory.

 

 

Unfortunately, I had to remind Monte that there was only one model we could afford.