Touring Boston – What to Know About Attending a Cape Code Factory Tour with Kids

New England has this amazing brand of potato chips call Cape Cod Chips.  They are thin, crisp, salty and pretty much the best potato chips I have ever eaten in my life… and honestly until I tried them I was not a huge potato chip fan.  

Anyway one day I was looking at the back of the bag and saw that they offer factory tours and knew that before my husband finished his studies and we moved away from Boston that we needed to tour this factory… mostly because it sounded ridiculous … and awesome.   

Just after Labor Day we decided to take a short camping trip to Cape Cod and decided that one of the attractions we wanted to see along the way was our chip factory.  

We parked and walked up to the building, only to see signs that no photos were allowed to be taken inside the factory.  We snapped a few outside and then stepped into the building.  The tour was self guided and pretty much just a long walk down the hallway where you could stop and peek through different windows to see what was happening.  Next to each window there was short plaque describing what was happening and you could move as quickly or as slowly as you wanted. 

We watched all the potatoes being poured onto conveyor belts and men and women looking them over to remove bad potatoes.  Then we saw the potatoes getting cut up into little bits, followed by being soaked in oil and fried.  When they were done cooking we followed the belt to the next window to see them getting salted and more people picking out the less than perfect chips. 

Then we walked to the last window and watched the bags being made and the chips getting stuffed into them.  Our two year old son was mesmerized by this process and we stood at those windows for a long long time watching the bags being made by a robot and then filled with chips. 

The tour ended and you get a small sample bag of chips to enjoy as you walk through the gift shop. 

The tour is really short, honestly if you don’t stop at the window and watch and read you would be done with it five minutes.  For us, with our toddler this was great since we could stop at the places that he was interested and move on when he wasn’t.  It was also easy to leave at anytime.  The chips were delicious and my son loved it.  Months later he still likes telling people about going to the chip factory, which makes it a win in my book.  

Rating: ★★★★☆

Four Stars. The tour was great and I thought it was perfect length for a toddler, but there really wasn’t much to it.  Just a long narrow hallway with windows to peek into.  If you’re not really into machinery and watching things happening, it may not be worth your time to make the drive or the detour to the factory.

100 Breed’s Hill Road
Hyannis, MA 02601

 Phone: 1-888-881-2447
 Website: http://www.capecodchips.com/about-us/factory-tour.html