I toured the Yakult factory in Fountain Valley
I've had a long-running dream to tour a bunch of factories. My job is fake, all about making ephemeral software toys, so I romanticize big machines making Actual Objects. (Also, there's all those conveyor belt games I love!) I want to see conveyor belts, and robot arms moving shit around, and people in hairnets performing cryptic duties.
Luckily for me, I got to see all of that - AND MORE!! - at the Yakult factory in Orange County.
If I sound like I'm shilling Yakult, I am. I actually do not drink it, and rarely even see it in the stores where I shop. But the Yakult factory has some serious propaganda - mostly in the form of extremely cheerful outreach employees who effusively praise Yakult in every way possible - and I had such a good time learning about Yakult that I am now absolutely going to buy it the next time I see it in a store. The propaganda worked on me. I learned about the Yakult Ladies. I also had to learn a lot about probiotics, which don't seem to do very much for me, personally. I have forgotten every single thing I learned about probiotics today.
Actually, I remember quite a lot of what I learned about how they are cultured. I got to see the "seed room" where they culture the bacteria, and the giant fermentation vats, and the mixing vats where they mix the fermented milk with syrup. I also got to see the machines making the bottles. The best machines were absolutely the machines labeling, capping, and shrink-wrapping the bottles, though. It was all insanely good. I felt like I was watching a videogame. Looking at a bunch of machines churning out Yakult in an orderly fashion had the monkey-endorphin-gif effect on me. It was great.
If you like watching those "how it's made" type factory tour videos, or if you play a lot of conveyor belt games, I cannot recommend this tour enough. It's in Fountain Valley, CA, and it is FREE. They offer signups on this website. The staff are lovely. I believe they offer this tour in a lot of their factories, so if you live near their factories in any other region, you are probably also lucky enough to experience what I experienced.
The one downside, however, is that you are not allowed to take pictures of the production process. I was however allowed to take these pictures of myself:
Please treat Yakult Man nicely! No kicking, punching, or hitting allowed.
Yakult from various regions:
A Yakult stress toy they gave us:
I was unsurprised to learn that Yakult's creator was into Esperanto. This was a very 20th century health-food-industry fascination to have:
The Origin of the name Yakult
Dr. Shirota named it
The name comes from "jahurto" which in Esperanto means yogurt. At the time it was believed that this new language would become an international auxiliary language.
I desperately wish that I was allowed to photograph the production line. Instead, you will have to take their "virtual factory tour" here, which includes all the videos that play in the viewing gallery where you view the production process. In the QA room in real life, I got to see a person unloading a cart full of ENORMOUS, comically-large beaker-shaped containers of Yakult. In the packing room, I got to see them pause the production line and fix an issue with a gigantic robot arm. It was incredible. You can have the closest thing to that experience in the link above.
Man!!! I want to visit more factories!! I'm now discovering even more in the area that I could tour. There's a ramen factory in Rancho Cucamonga that offers tours. I can live the dream!!!