The open-and-shut case for keeping factory tours
Safety, legal concerns closing plant doors, but public curiosity about how things are made also sparking new interest
When Kellogg closed its doors to the public in 1986, after about eight decades of providing tours, it left a bitter taste in the mouths of cornflake fans.
“The cereal will be the same, I guess,” one visitor told the New York Times soon after the announcement, “but the feeling won’t be the same when I sit down to eat breakfast.”
Kellogg wasn’t the only big company to nix its popular factory tour. Heinz stopped welcoming visitors to its Pittsburgh plant in 1972 for safety and competitive reasons. Ford did the same at its River Rouge Complex in Detroit eight years later over concerns about liability and industrial spying. In the late nineties, the carmaker reintroduced the tour, but it doesn’t show as much of the production process, said Melissa Foster, a spokesperson for the Henry Ford Museum.
More and more manufacturers are pulling down a curtain over their assembly lines, after more than century of giving consumers a glimpse of how their stuff is made, experts say.
Worries about on-site accidents leading to crippling lawsuits have led many factories to scrap their tours, said Marvin Ryder, a marketing, entrepreneurship and business strategy professor at McMaster University.
“They can give you all a hard hat and safety glasses, what have you, but nonetheless if you wander off somehow and fall into a vat of beer, they have (legal) obligations,” he said.
According to one of the few studies on factory tours, published in an architecture journal in 2003, plants started to open their gates to the public in the late19th century to rebuff stories by investigative journalists, who exposed unfair and disgusting industrial working conditions.
“Turn-of-the-century Americans found themselves faced with two contradictory images of what occurred on the grounds of the plant — the paradise displayed on the tour or the dangerous and decrepit environment described by muckrakers,” wrote William Littmann, a professor of architecture at an arts college in California.
As industry leaves North America for places with cheaper labour and looser regulations, the centurylong tradition of factory tours is on the decline, his study says.
After researching factory visits to respond to the Star’s request for comment, the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership found that two car factories, General Motors in Oshawa and Ford in Oakville, and two steel plants stopped offering tours.
“They cite safety concerns but also, factories no longer have the staff they used to, especially within the automotive industry,” said spokesperson Helen Lovekin, in an email. “Food regulations have put most food factory tours out of bounds,” she added. “Finally, some factories are shy about their production secrets.”
However, a few companies still see advantages in letting customers peek at their assembly lines, for a price. Steam Whistle has shown tourists around its brewery in the John St. Roundhouse across from the CN Tower since opening in the spring of 2000.
Visitors on the tour can sip pilsners fresh after bottling, said Steam Whistle communications director Sybil Taylor. “People are making purchase and consumption decisions a little differently these days,” she said, “so opening up the doors like this and letting people see for themselves, wander about our catwalk, take pictures and ask questions is an open book situation, and people really respond to it.”
Initially, the brewery let the public onto the factory floor, but built a catwalk for about six years ago to avoid crowding and accidents.
South of the border, a variety of companies allow tours, from Louisville Slugger to Gibson guitars. The American heritage brand Pendleton invites visitors to walk through its mills in Oregon and Washington for free. “We find that when consumers see for themselves what goes into producing a quality woolen textile, there’s a higher level of appreciation,” said spokesperson Linda Parker, in an email.
Photography is forbidden on the tour to prevent “early exposure” of custom products, she said.
The popularity of the Discovery Channel program How It’s Made, now in its 28th season, suggests people are still curious about how things go from the factory to their door.
The show details how crayons, crematorium urns, hockey pucks and a multitude of other goods are fashioned. On average, about 683,000 viewers tuned in each week during the previous season, according to Bell spokesperson Sarah Goddard.
The further removed people are from farms and assembly lines, the more they are curious about how their stuff is made, said Ryder, the McMaster professor.
New technology makes the whole process even more mystifying, he added.
“My young students all want to create an app,” he said, “but they don’t know, underneath everything, how to make a computer.”
“I think this is what we’re losing, we’re losing touch with the basic technologies around us.”
“We’re losing touch with the basic technologies around us." MARVIN RYDER MARKETING PROFESSOR