Missouri

Anheuser-Busch (St Louis, MO)

St. Louis, MO

Lattitude/Longitude
38.60027, -90.213489

Your tour through the historic 100-acre plant in St. Louis, Missouri, just 3 minutes from the Gateway Arch, will follow the journey of how we create our great beers. You will also have the opportunity to visit the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale paddock and stable, the beechwood aging cellars, our historic Brew House, the Bevo packaging plant, and everyone's favorite stop, the Hospitality Room. Click on the picture to begin the journey of our great beers.

Burgers' Smokehouse

California, MO

Lattitude/Longitude
38.595811, -92.573504

Located along the Moreau River, Burgers' Smokehouse is 3 miles south of California, Missouri on a farm off Highway 87. Just follow the signs.

Each year thousand of folks stop by our visitor's center and take a Smokehouse tour.

With the help of artist Terry Chase and his assistant, George Baldwin, the visitors center features dioramas that depict the seasons of the year. Other exhibits display ingredients, pictures, and artifacts that explain the art of meat curing.

As you enter the Visitor's Center over a covered bridge, windows on the left open to a Spring diorama scene while the other windows on the right overlook a Winter scene. Water runs under the bridge and through the dioramas continuously.

After exiting the bridge, you enter a Fall setting depicting a farmyard that features a handmade waterwheel. Slim (our little hillbilly boy) sits in the hayloft to welcome you to the Smokehouse.

You proceed around the next corner and there is Missouri in the Summertime. Wild turkey, deer, squirrel, and an assortment of wildlife as it appears in the Missouri Ozarks, are a part of this large diorama. From the bottom of the pool, up the cliffs to the sky is 2 1/2 stories high, making it one of the largest dioramas in the United States. Painting with a small brush on such a large canvas required a great deal of time, talent, and patience. The Summertime Diorama is, indeed, impressive.

As you proceed down the hall to the Smokehouse reception desk, on your left you will notice a miniature replica depicting the old covered bridge that used to cross the Moreau River, located a few hundred yards south of the Smokehouse.

When you enter our sales room, tell our receptionist you would like to see our video tour. The salesperson will seat you in our theatre and start the video.

After the video tour you will be given samples of some of our products. Perhaps you will want to drop by our sandwich bar for a Smokehouse sandwich.

As you drive down the lane from the Smokehouse, we hope that you will feel that the time you have spent at BURGERS' SMOKEHOUSE was both enjoyable and informational.

Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company

Saint Louis, MO

Lattitude/Longitude
,

Fulfill a childhood dream and visit the Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company factory, candy kitchen and world headquarters! The Abel Family opened their new plant in 2012 and offers FREE factory tours 6-days-a-week! We will take you down onto the factory floor so you can see, hear, smell and taste chocolates right in front of your eyes! We will show you our candy kitchen and chocolate enrobers - so you can watch our candy makers hand make chocolates right in front of your eyes! Our Chocolate factory is becoming a popular St. Louis tourist destination, with over 50,000 visitors each year!

Hallmark Visitor Center

Kansas City, MO

Lattitude/Longitude
39.082505, -94.58198

As small as a shoebox, as big as a dream. The Hallmark world of smiles and sentiment, cards and creativity began in 1910 and has continued to grow for more than 90 years.

At the Hallmark Visitors Center in Kansas City, MO, you can:

See live technicians manufacture products using technology and craftsmanship.

Watch a six-minute multimedia film presentation as you listen to Hallmark artists and writers explain how the creative process works.

Browse through an exhibit of more than 250 Keepsake Ornaments including the famous Starship Enterprise® and Here Comes Santa.

Press a button and watch a bow machine make a star ribbon gift bow in seconds. Best of all ? it?s yours to keep!

Experience the Visitors Center using a fun Activity Sheet that will enhance your visit as you discover items in each of the 14 extraordinary exhibits.

Harley-Davidson Vehicle and Powertrain (Kansas City, MO)

Kansas City, MO

Lattitude/Longitude
39.300016, -94.667678

The 358,000-square-foot Harley-Davidson Vehicle and Powertrain Operations in Kansas City, Mo. was built in 1998.

Kansas City employees produce the Sportster®, Dyna® and VRSC? families of motorcycles from fabrication and finishing through final assembly to include the liquid-cooled Revolution® powertrain for the VRSC V-Rod.

The tour center features a series of displays that guide you through the various manufacturing and assembly processes. You'll also have the chance to sit on current production motorcycles and visit the gift shop, which features tour-related souvenirs.
Your tour experience begins with an introductory video. Then it's on to the factory floor where you'll witness a wide range of operations from welding, laser-cutting and frame-bending, to polishing and assembly. You'll see fenders and gas tanks being formed, newly painted frames hanging on the line, and sophisticated robotic welding technology. You'll also see the Revolution® powertrain assembled from crankcase to cylinder heads.

Herbaria Soap

St Louis, MO

Lattitude/Longitude
38.615308, -90.271969

Our soap making business began when I tried to find a mild natural soap that would moisturize my skin rather than dry it out,? said LaRee DeFreece. ?I was looking for a soap made with one hundred percent natural plant-based ingredients and enriched with emollients.?

In late 2000, she decided to make her own soap. She had discovered that even the mildest of soaps was made of petrochemicals rather than natural ingredients. Searching the Internet, she came upon soap recipes and began testing them.

?That first recipe resulted in a soap that was truly disgusting, but I soon found one that would work much better,? she said. LaRee, a real estate attorney, had returned to college to study chemistry to become a plant patent attorney as well. She came to understand the chemistry of soap making.

She learned that coconut oil or palm kernel oil would produce a hard, long-lasting bar with a fluffy lather and that soy oil would create a stable lather with conditioning qualities.She learned that olive oil, a natural skin softener, would moisturize the skin. She found books that taught her the chemical equations for formulating soap recipes that would result in different desirable characteristics.

She researched the sources of natural ingredients, from the lye and oils that would serve as the basis for soap to the essential oils that would provide the scents. She realized that most people don?t understand the difference between essential oils derived from actual plants and manufactured synthetic fragrances.

?In searching the Web, I soon realized that, although there are a number of soap makers listed, there are only perhaps five percent that really use nothing butall-natural ingredients,? she said. ?While there?s nothing wrong with using chemicals to make soap, it has been important to me from the beginning that our soap be made completely of natural plant-based ingredients.?

At Christmas, LaRee gave bars of her soap to relatives and friends. That first soap was a mild citrus soap?with essential oils of orange, lemongrass and tangerine. It smelled great and the response was overwhelming. ?Everyone loved it so much that I thought?maybe I?ve really got something here,? she thought.

Her husband, graphic artist and marketing expert Ken Gilberg thought so, too. Together they began making soap in earnest and named the new company Herbaria. Their first commercial customer was Gilberg Perennial Farm, owned and run by Ken?s sister-in-law Cindy Gilberg. When sales proved to be quite good in 2001, Cindy suggested that they apply to participate in Missouri Botanical Garden?s Best of Missouri which features state products made and sold by entrepreneurs from Kansas City to St. Louis.

?At first, the co-chairman of Best of Missouri said that applications had already closed for the October 2002 event. I said ?let me send you a couple of bars of our soap and see how you like it?,? said LaRee. ?A few days later, she called and said ?you?re in!?

?That meant that we had to hustle,? Ken said. ?We wanted to make 3,000 bars of soap in time to take to Best of Missouri. We made it. I think we sold over half of them.?

LaRee worked about 12 hours a day during the heat of summer to make enough soap for that first major push. She was making four batches a day. Her father had made mold boxes of some beautiful old wood. ?They were works of art,? she said. ?Each one would hold 54 bars of soap, so I made the recipe batches to fit that number. I would cut the bars apart with an antique butcher knife that my great-aunt had given me.?

A week before Best of Missouri, LaRee agreed to take a new job in real estate law that would begin the day after the show. Since the new job would be very demanding, she would be unable to devote as much time to the growing soap business. Ken, with over 30 years of experience in marketing, saw great opportunity for Herbaria. He added his own touches to the products. He standardized the bar size and designed new packaging and displays. He increased sales calls to businesses in the region and soon boosted production to 30,000 bars a year.

Following the success of their sales at Best of Missouri, the two expanded their horizons. Although LaRee wouldn?t be able to be as active, she remained an important member of the team, coming up with new recipes and scent combinations. The next big customer was the gift shop at the Gateway Arch. And those sales led to more sales at other national parks. The soaps sold in the national park shops were made with a focus on the 19th century in keeping with the emphasis on both the Civil War and Lewis & Clark.

The Bug Store, a St. Louis institution with two successful locations, became a loyal customer. The Greentree Shop at the Kirkwood Public Library also became a good customer. When LaRee heard about the children?s summer reading programs at the library Herbaria gave 400 bars of peppermint soap to be used as incentives, each bar awarded for 20 hours of reading.

?At about that time, I realized we would have to make some changes in our procedures if we were to grow,? Ken said. ?We now manufacture our soaps in cubic-foot molds made of plastic lumber. After waiting two days for the soap to become solid, we cut it into loaves with special jigs fitted with guitar strings. Then the loaves are cut into bars with another guitar-string jig. The soap bars cure for two weeks and then are ready to wrap and pack.?

?The two-week curing period represents the finalization of the chemical process that transforms acids from fat and alkalies from sodium hydroxide (lye) into a salt that we call soap,? said LaRee. ?Herbaria soaps are made the old-fashioned way that retains the naturally occurring glycerin. They are super-fatted with shea butter, avocado oil, hemp seed oil or jojoba to attain an even more moisturizing quality.?

Ken has expanded the sales of Herbaria soaps to include the Missouri Historical Society and also a number of bed and breakfasts. In addition, sales from the Herbaria web site have increased to include orders from all over the United States.

?We hope to get sales up to over 60,000 bars a year,? Ken said. ?Our product line now includes a natural citronella bar, an old-fashioned lye soap bar that is great for shampooing, and a bar with almond essential oil. Lavender Oatmeal and Spearmint Orange are the top two sellers of all our soaps.?

Purina Visitors Center

Gray Summit, MO

Lattitude/Longitude
38.494842, -90.83599

The Purina Farms Visitors Center incorporates a Pet Center, a full-size barn containing domestic farm animals, a theater and informational center. Demonstrations, dog obedience shows and hands-on petting areas are some of the highlights of this popular attraction, which draws nearly 200,000 visitors a year.

The Purina Farms Visitors Center offers an educational experience by providing exhibits that help explain to owners how to determine the optimal diet for their pet based on its health and nutritional status. In addition, a 75-seat theater offers an ongoing video presentation.

Visitors can experience the excitement of operating a pet food factory in a hands-on exhibit that demonstrates Purina's expertise in creating leading dog and cat foods. Plus, displays and a timeline help to connect visitors with the history of Purina.

While at the Visitors Center, visitors can browse through the Purina Farms Store to pick up Purina mementos or breed-specific sculptures, ornaments and shirts. Food services also are provided at the Visitors Center.

Shatto Milk Company

Osborn, MO

Lattitude/Longitude
39.691522, -94.402848

Shatto Milk Company is a family dairy farm that milks 150 cows twice a day and bottles that milk at their, on the farm, bottling facility. The milk is bottled in old fashion glass bottles. The family farm offers a wide array of YUMMY products including butter, Root Beer Milk, Strawberry Milk, the worlds best Chocolate Milk, Orange Dream Milk, a full line of white milks and of course cream and half and half.

Shatto Milk Company schedules tours Tuesday through Saturday throughout the year. Call ahead for appointment. Tours include:

Seeing the baby calves (you may possibly get to bottle-feed one yourself).
Milking a cow.
Getting a first-hand look at where our cows live, what they eat, and how they are milked.
Learning how the milk is processed (this includes a tour of the processing plant or viewing the actual process, along with a description of each step our milk goes through before it ends up on your table).
Seeing how the wonderful milk is packaged in their famous glass bottles and how those bottles are washed before being re-used.
Sampling many of Shatto Milk Company's tasty products.

Tours typically last one and a half hours (1.5 hours) from start to finish. The minimum group size is ten however smaller groups such as families can be accommodated. There is a $4 charge per person, and children two and under are free. All groups are welcome; we have hosted tours for school field trips, families, Boy and Girl Scouts, businesses, and Senior citizen bus tours.

The Shatto Milk Company Country Store is your one stop-shop for farm fresh milk, cow collectibles, clothing, snacks, and gifts of all types.

While browsing the Country Store visitors can sample many of the yummy products bottled by Shatto Milk Company, then walk about fifty feet up the sidewalk to the barn and pet the baby calves; or just stay in the store and view the bottling plant through one of the two large viewing windows.

Once you are through looking around the farm store and venturing up to the dairy, visitors are always encouraged to relax in our porch swing or on our old fashion church pew. These relaxing seats offer an opportunity to watch our cows roam the pasture. Visitors are welcome to stop by the farm store 7 days a week.

The Roasterie Factory

Kansas City, MO

Lattitude/Longitude
39.0789792, -94.5986791

On Nov. 22, 1978, Danny O?Neill picked his first batch of coffee beans in the mountainous, coffee-growing region around the Poás volcano while studying abroad in Costa Rica. Right then and there, he fell in love with the country, the people and the coffee?especially the coffee. Fifteen years later, when Danny founded The Roasterie in his basement in one of Kansas City's great neighborhoods, Brookside, it just made sense that he would partner directly with farmers and pay above market values to get the best of the best coffee beans.

Today, direct trade makes more sense than ever. The Roasterie still believes in partnering with farmers at origin, in mutually beneficial direct trade relationships ? removing the middle man from the equation. By doing this, our farmers get much higher prices for their coffees than they would with other conventional and non-conventional trade systems.

One of the most renowned specialty coffee roasters in the nation, nobody else does it like we do. We are committed to finding the best coffees from around the world, for a fair price. Those beans are then roasted using a convection air-roasting method, instead of the more traditional drum-roasting method, to ensure superior consistency and a tastier, smoother cup of coffee.

Quality, freshness, education. That's what The Roasterie is about. Try any of our coffees and you'll be able to taste and smell the difference our commitment makes.

The Roasterie Café
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In 2005, The Roasterie Café was opened in Brookside. The Café has been voted the ?Best Coffee Shop? in Kansas City by "KC Magazine" five out of six years in operation. After great success in Brookside, in 2010 The Roasterie opened a second Café at One Nineteen in Leawood, KS. Read more about The Roasterie Cafe.

QUICK FACTS:
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The Roasterie imports only 100-percent Arabica Specialty Grade coffees from 31 different producing countries.

Each coffee bean purchased by The Roasterie has been picked by hand.

The Roasterie is a strong advocate for Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, Organic, Smithsonian Bird Friendly® certifications and more.

Since January of 2010, nine of The Roasterie's coffees have received a ranking of 90 or higher on CoffeeReview.com, the premier international coffee-buying guide.

OUR MISSION:
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1. To buy the best beans we can find in the world,
2. To roast them the best way known to man (air roasting),
3. To deliver them as fast as humanly possible.

Vacuum Cleaner Museum and Tacony Factory Outlet

St. James, MO

Lattitude/Longitude
38.0113001, -91.5981829

The Vacuum Cleaner Museum is an extensive collection of more than 500 vacuums spanning a century of progress. The museum displays vacuums from the 1910s to modern times in decade-themed vignettes, complete with period furniture and memorabilia from that era. Visitors will discover a glimpse of Americana through the evolution of the vacuum and accompanying newspaper and magazine advertising displayed in each decade. The museum is located at Tacony Manufacturing in St. James, Missouri, home of Riccar and Simplicity vacuum production.