A Field Trip to the Sunbeam Bread Bakery was Always the Highlight of the School Year!
Everyone can agree that the best thing about going to school was the field trips! The excitement of being away from the classroom for a day and on a bus to an exciting destination was thrilling to say the least! Across the country annually, students would head to one of our bakeries to experience how delicious Sunbeam Bread was made.
“I can vividly recall that momentous day in elementary school when a permission slip for a field trip to Sunbeam was handed out. It was like Christmas Day came early! We all wondered what we did to deserve such good fortune,” remembers one former student.
Just the simple mention of the word “Sunbeam” immediately invokes a craving for freshly baked bread. Arriving at the bakery, students would smell the pleasant aroma of bread already wafting outside of the building. You could easily imagine a loaf of that glorious white bread in your hands as you give it a gentle squeeze!
Make no mistake, while the field trip was a momentous occasion for children, teachers were just as excited to spend the afternoon watching fresh loaves of Sunbeam Bread come out of the oven. “During the school year, we used to take the students on a field trip to the Sunbeam Bread bakery. At the end of the tour, we would get warm slices of buttered bread. Yum!” said a retired teacher.
A tour usually began in a large meeting room. The group would then be lead through the plant — it would be hot and loud in there! Students could experience the entire process — from where the dough was made and put into pans so it could rise, to where it was baked, cooled and bagged; and how many loaves were baked ever year. Teachers would challenge students to use their math skills to figure out how many sandwiches that would be!
Kids and adults would walk around with noses high in the air and lots of sniffing. Seeing how the bread was made and packaged was fun, but eating fresh baked samples was a joyful experience! “We were able to walk through and watch the bread being made; and then were given a kid-sized loaf of fresh, warm bread to chow down on in the bus back to school. Heaven!”
A tour with a Q&A session for children (and adults) to ask manager questions. Each child got to leave with a free loaf of bread and sometimes a book that showed the whole process from beginning to end, both treasured momentos!
Great debates were had on the way home as to what was the best way to make from the heavenly slices: Tuna Melt, French Toast, PBJ, or just all by itself. Departing from the bakery, the aroma would begin to fade. Kids would come home from school determined to convince their parents that they needed a loaf of Sunbeam Bread NOW — something Little Miss Sunbeam would definitely approve of!
