Visiting the factory where Peeps are made, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is a true Willy Wonka experience. The building is packed with pipes full of marshmallows and hoses full of sugar. Spray guns spray food colors and flavors. Even the occasional “encouragement” moments that occur when candy makers are testing new products seem amusing: “We have an engineer who’s notorious for pushing buttons he’s not supposed to,” says Daniel Moyer, food scientist at Just Born. Quality Confections. the company that makes Peeps. “Sometimes it ends up completely covered in marshmallow.”
It wasn’t always so fun. In the early 1950s, some employees at the Peeps factory ended each shift with arms limp and sore. They had spent hours hand squeezing marshmallows into the shapes of little chicks. Back then, each individual Peep took 27 hours to make from start to finish.
That all changed in 1954. That’s when Bob Born, a member of the family that founded the company, and a colleague invented a machine that could automatically make Peeps. Now it takes just six minutes from the time the marshmallow meets the conveyor belt to the final boxing.
Bob Born died in January at age 98. But his legacy lives on in that very factory, which now houses four production belts. They produce 5.5 million Peeps on an average day, in all sorts of shapes (like bunnies or skulls in the fall), flavors (sour watermelon, anyone?), and colors.
Of course, the classic Peep, especially during the busy Easter season, is still that fluffy little yellow chick. This is how they are made.
Step 1
Preparing the Sugar
The bright yellow (or pink or blue) sugar coating on Peeps chicks starts out just like the same white stuff you have at home, except the Peeps factory pours it into 100-pound bags. Four bags at a time go into giant spinning drums that tumble sugar the way a dryer tumbles clothes. A worker then pours food coloring into a funnel that feeds a spray gun, which shoots it into the drum, where the tumbling mixes and dries it.
The sugar dyeing process takes about 18 minutes. The sugar is then emptied into giant containers and brought to the beginning of a long conveyor belt, where a vacuum cleaner sucks up the sugar and spreads it across the belt.
Step 2
cooking the marshmallow
If you’ve ever bitten into a Peep, you know that under its brightly colored sugar skin is an interior made of marshmallow. To create all that fluff, 1,400 pounds of water, sugar, and corn syrup are first heated into a hot, sticky syrup that candy makers call bob. Gelatin is added to help the bob harden so it can eventually hold its shape, along with vanilla and other flavors. The process is overseen by marshmallow cooks, who have one of the most specialized jobs in the factory. It’s your responsibility to make sure the marshmallow is perfectly fluffy; if it doesn’t have the right density, it could ruin everything.
Step 3
Shape the chicks
How exactly does the marshmallow mixture transform from a blob of slime to a baby chick with a beak? Well, that’s a secret Just Born is keeping under wraps. But here’s the basic idea: Liquid marshmallow is pumped through an aerator, a wide tube filled with rotating wires that blast air into it, making it fluffy, and into a machine called a depositor. The depositor then squeezes the marshmallow onto the sugar-coated conveyor belt.
stage 4
The army of chicks arrives
The Peeps are made in sets of five connected chicks, like little troops marching down the conveyor belt. It happens quickly, with new groups of chicks hatching every few seconds.
step 5
taking a sugar shower
As the Peeps make their way down the conveyor belt, they enter what the company calls a sugar rain, though it’s actually more like a sugar dusting storm. The belt transports the chicks under a set of nozzles that bombard them with compressed air. That whips up the sugar coating on the belt in a frenzy covering every surface of the (still hot and sticky) Peeps.
step 6
making faces
Now the Peeps are recognizable as yellow chicks, but they are missing one important thing: eyes! The conveyor belt leads them to machines that contain melted edible carnauba wax and are equipped with sensors that can indicate approaching chicks. As each chick goes under, the machine’s nozzles do a PFFT! sound, like a BB gun, and shoot two wax eyes at each chick. They usually land in the right place. But if the timing isn’t right, the employees adjust the machine and remove the bad Peeps. (They are not wasted. They are melted down to be used again, after all the floating eyes have been filtered out.)
step 7
refresh
The Peeps are now complete, but they are still too warm and fluffy to be packed. (But they’re perfect for eating, according to the employees who can taste them at this point.) So the conveyor belt takes a 161 foot route to the packing area to give them a chance to cool down. At some point after the sugar rain (varies on different production lines), the chicks are also passed over a wire mesh that allows the extra sugar to fall off, leaving them squeaky clean and ready for packing.
step 8
Passing Inspection
As the Peeps make their way to the packing area, they pass through hatches that can be activated if a worker notices a problem with the batch. Peeps that fall through the hatch are conveyed to a bucket which is ultimately poured back into the mixing bowl.
step 9
Cozy on your trays
If they are ready, the rows of chicks continue to pack into trays. There are a couple of different ways this happens: On a production line, people place the Peeps on trays by hand. In another, robots with rubber fingers (soft enough not to crush the delicate marshmallow) do the job. And in another, the conveyor belt drops them neatly into place.
step 10
Ending
The trays filled with chicks go through a machine called a flow wrapper. It’s like a giant tape gun, but instead of tape, it’s strung with plastic gaskets. As the trays pass, the material wraps around them and a hot metal clamp seals them.
step 11
to the boxes
Once the trays are wrapped, a spiral belt leads them to final quality control, where they pass through a metal detector that doubles as a scale, to make sure none of the factory equipment got in any way. The finished packets of chicks are then packed so they can begin their next journey: into your stomach.
Kevin Dupzyk is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn who frequently reports on how things work, from a vinyl record pressing plant to the inside of a volcano. christopher payne is a photographer specializing in American architecture and industry. His book, ”Made In America,” is scheduled to be published by Abrams this fall.