Sweet Tooth California Desserts at Porto's Bakery Torrance Bakery and more!

Welcome to Matt Addison's Best of California. This episode, Sweet Tooth, California. Oh my gosh, we're in Orumville at La Flor Mikan. And I have a pin loco. I have a banana split and Cheetos with nacho cheese and jalapeno. This is going to be incredible. We're going to visit many, many more sweet spots here in California. So, let's get on the road. Sweet Tooth, California. Hold on a second. Wait a minute. Yellow Eminem. My favorite. I'm Pat Patterson and I love California. [Music] So, I am so excited to be at Bandini Toffee for our sweets with Steven Tiff. And Stephen, tell me the incredible story behind this amazing toffee. Well, Brendan Wymer and his friend Leah wanted to go on spring break to Italy when they were 15 years old. And they went to their parents like good teenagers do and say, "We want to do this. Give us the money." Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I don't know any teenagers to do that. But anyway, I digress. And so their parents said, "We'll meet you halfway. We'll we'll give you half. We'll kick in spending money, but the rest is on you." And so Brandon went to his friend and said, "I think we can finance the trip by selling my toffee." Village Fest on Thursday night, College of the Desert on the weekends. They made enough money to pay for the entire trip. And when they got back from their their vacation in Europe, they had so many orders that their parents decided, we've got a business opportunity. Oh my gosh. So, the student project developed into what's become a booming business. Now, now, is this the only location? Where where are they? So, there are four locations. Um, Rancho Mirage is where all of the the products are made. and they have a retail counter. This is the first freestanding store under the Brandini umbrella in downtown Palm Springs and we are a little over 7 years old. We have a shop at the Capazon Outlets which is a little more than 5 years old and then there's a shop in Century City Westfield Mall which is our newest location and we are just a little over two years old out there. Okay. So tell me a little bit. I'm a total neophite to toffee. What what should I know about toffee if I'm going to be a connoisseur or how it's made? I don't actually know how it's made. Wow, there we go. I I know the ingredients. Butter and sugar make toffee. And then you throw in time and temperature and then we embellish it with a layer of semieet dark chocolate and roasted almonds on the top. Tell me a little bit about this guy. That is one of our ice cream items. Wow. This was actually the first ice cream item that they came up with was a toffee milkshake where we use chocolate or vanilla ice cream that we then embellish with the toffee crumbles. And in this location in downtown Palm Springs, we're actually able to do the shake with a double shot of espresso. Oh gosh. So, not only sweet, but I'm going to be up all night. And part of what the best of California does is we are very promoting of family local businesses. And this is kind of the ultimate version of that. A couple of students. Absolutely it is. And and you know, a little hard work and a lot of loyalty from the community has helped us remain consistent through the pandemic. That's that's been a tough time for a lot of retailers. Well, we're here at Bandini Toffee in Palm Springs. I'm with Steven Tiff. Thank you, Steve. Absolutely. Thank you for coming in and enjoy your milkshake. I'm going to I got to go get my milkshake. Let's Let's check this out. Okay, I'm going to try my milkshake with the toffee. Oh, crunchy. Oh my gosh. Wow. That is incredible. Pantini toffee. Here we are. What a best candy store by in the state of California by business news. Wow. I can see why. Mhm. That's good. [Music] So, I am so excited. We're here in Fairfield at the Jelly Belly Factory. This is incredible. And I'm with John Jameson, VP Retail Operations. And John, thank you for having us. Oh, thanks for coming to Fairfield today. This is incredible. Now, who's this guy? Well, this is Mr. Jelly Belly. He you'll see him everywhere here on the factory tour and visitor center. Now, when did you guys kind of enter the popular culture of America? I mean, you're so ubiquitous, but how did that what was the evolution of that? Well, we started in uh making Jelly Belly Jelly Beans in 1976, and it really took off. But when Ronald Reagan got into office, and he had it in his uh his office, he had it on Marine One, in fact, which was his helicopter. It really was the first bean in space. He made he made sure that happened on the Challenger. How did it get decided? very brilliantly by the way for our viewers that the public should be able to see everything. Well, we started with a little outlet store and from there we said, well, let's let's take people into the factory and originally we actually marched people through the factory. Well, we decided, you know, if we want to grow that, we're not going to be able to to bring, you know, a few hundred people through a year. And now hundreds of thousands of people. And as we approach our 8 millionth guest, you'll see when you go take the factory tour that it is built for large crowds. It's all safe with um you know with CO uh we we um it's all spread out. So you know when when the folks do come and see it, they'll they'll see how safe it is here. So John, I understand jelly beans, but you have a wine experience here at the factory. We do. We have our first of all, we have our chocolate shop downstairs. We we make these incredible different items of chocolate and fudge. So, I have to give credit where credit is due. My wife came up with this back in 2012. What's your wife's name? My wife's name is Diane. Thank you, Diane. What a great idea. And she uh she said, "You know, you should have a chocolate and wine experience at Jelly Belly." And I'm like, you know, that's not a bad idea. So, um we ended up bringing in local Cissoon Valley wines. We we mix them with our different chocolates. We have six wines, six chocolates, and a Jelly Belly wine glass to take home. Uh and a non-alcoholic experience. You get five of the chocolates, the glass. That's what I'm going to try. And the sparkling cider. So, we have the last one set up for you. This one that I'm drinking is a dark chocolate shot glass filled with a late a portlike wine, red wine. So, can we toast? Go. Go. And I'm I'm having the Martinelli. Hard. Boom. Oh, boy. I'm following his lead. Now, we got to eat this thing. Oh, yeah. That's the best part. So, John, tell me where we are. So, we're right here at the kitchen. This is where we actually put together all the ingredients to make our candy slurry, which is our liquid center. From there, it's pumped into the mogul and deposited into the tray. So, all the ingredients, I mean, these are the cooks. These are the people. Absolutely. This is we make we put the corn syrup together, all the different flavors, everything goes together right here. So, Josh, tell me what we got here. So, what we have here is a representation of what is happening in the mobile below. First of all, we start with a tray filled with starch. Then the next tray, we imprint the mold into there where the jelly belly beans take shape. And then from there, the slurry that was just made is pumped into the tray. And then that starts the process. It gets cured overnight at well over 100°. And that's why it's so warm here right now. And tell me, John, you were mentioning that this jelly belly gets made from the inside out versus another kind. Tell me what that means. Well, most jelly beans are what's called a pectin center and then a flavored shell that takes a few days to make. Uh, it's a very inexpensive process. It doesn't take that long. Our beans take 7 to 14 days to make and we make it from the inside out. So, all the flavor, all the color, all that is built from the inside out over time. So we we really would rather take our time and make a beautiful perfect jelly bean than rush it and make something that we're not proud of. And and a figure I heard earlier is how many billion jelly 15 billion beans a year billion. You're doing your job out there right there. I should say it's definitely growing. What is this? So those beans before came out of the mogul and they were arresting and then they go into panning. So what happens in panning is we add sugar, color, flavor all the way through. So that again, we're building the bean from the inside out. And then during the process of about an hour and a half or a little bit more, the beans gain about 40% more in volume. So again, we're building the bean from the inside out. But there's still not a jelly belly bean yet because we have more to show you. So John, I'm seeing what looks like a bunch of giant cement mixers down there. What are those doing? Well, what they're doing is they are putting that beautiful shine onto the jelly beans. We put a confectioner's glaze on it and it makes those jelly belly beans beautifully bright, very shiny. Just what kind of what you are used to seeing. Well, it's kind of tumbling like gems. Like gemstones. They are. And you should be in there when it's uh when they're tumbling. It gets very loud in there all of a sudden. Oh, that's incredible. There they are. They're getting their shine. So, John, you had a name for this. What is this? We call this our sea of beans. Sea of beans. I can see why. These beans just came out of the finishing room. But you know, they're not a Jelly Belly jelly bean yet. Do you know why? Why? But there's more. Because they don't have that beautiful Jelly Belly printed logo right on them. What have we got here? So, in the factory, you will see in the tour lane right before the beans are printed, we have a person downstairs on the factory floor. And what they're doing is they're looking to see if any of the beans are cracked, misshaped, or stuck together or uh different color. So this is like Lucy and Apple on the conveyor belt. Yeah. Not as fast, but a lot of fun. So that person is doing that on the factory. So we wanted to bring that tour experience right here into the tour lane. So this is a little game. So show show me show me how we start this game. It's going to start in two one. And see the juicy tear. We want to take everything. Oh, I got it. [Music] You know, video games, I always lose. Now, see, I'm the winner. You're the belly flop. I'm the belly flop. Figured. So, John, you were telling me it's not a jelly belly yet. What's happening that begins right here? So the beans are going through the whole process of being sorted to make sure that they're not broken, cracked, perfect, perfect shape. What happens then? It goes down below into the printers and the printers lightly kiss the bean. Wait a minute. Each each bean individual bean is kissed with a Jelly Belly logo. John, that was incredible. How was the factory tour? Oh, unbelievable. How far did we want? Uh, it was at least a quarter of a mile, if not a little bit longer. I I'll have my 10,000 steps. But I got to say, you have heightened my awareness of the quality that goes into your jelly beans. Well, there's a lot of quality that goes in. Uh, we take a lot of time to do it right. We put in uh the best ingredients. We don't skimp on anything. That's why our Jelly Belly jelly bean is really the best bean in the world. Unbelievable. And I notice a lot of people involved. You're given a lot of jobs here in California. We love that. Well, we have people here 10, 20, 30, even over 40 years working here. And and Jessica Gray, who's been so helpful in getting us that this segment together, told me that there's a sixth and even seventh generation of the family working here. Oh, we'll start with the fourth. Our chairman of the bean, Herm Roland. Chairman of the Bean. I love that. Our fifth, sixth, and you know, sometimes when school is out, the seventh generation. Wow, that's incredible. And and I got a preview. John is creating and the Jelly Belly people are creating a museum, but they won't let me tell you about it right yet. Have you come back though? We'll have you come back to see it. Let your folks see it for the first time. I'm I'm so excited about the museum. So, it's Pat Patterson. You got to check this place out. Jelly Belly in Fairfield. Beautiful, beautiful place to tour. [Music] I am so excited. We are in Bueno Park at my favorite bakery. Only I didn't know there was one here. Porto's famous famous throughout Southern California. I got to talk to Betty Porto. Betty, this is unbelievable. It's one of the It's the biggest bakery that we have built. Uh it's got to be one of the biggest bakeries in the world. Incredible. They do incredible business. Uh because all the tourism that comes here. Because of the I know they do the Yeah, they do their We do the biggest breakfast of all the bakeries. Wow. Because people come here before going to this land farm. So So I'm excited. We are going to get to see Haley make one of these cakes. And you're the chef here. What does she make right now? She's want to decorate the red velvet cake. Okay. Here at Porto Buena Park. So it's one of our favorites. Um, of course she has to be very careful because you know the finished product is is the one we look for and uh we we we have to please our guests and the they want perfection as well at quality and uh so she's very careful decorating the red velvet cake and these are red velvet crumbs. [Music] All right. Now tell me what's up next here. Well, next, one of our next is our fruit tart and is very very very uh well known in Portos. One of the favorite for our Ol as gorgeous berry, right? But right now they're working in the futar. This is 11 in. It has everything fresh, strawberries, uh blackberries, apples, mango, uh raspberries, blueberries. So pretty much every day we do like 400 400 400 days it can go to 500 or 600 and I heard that some of these berries are extremely local like you some of them are bought this morning. Yes. Uh they grow it for Portos. They grow it around um Santa Clarita. So they are local. Everything is around you know very fresh. Uh, as you can see, they are very big. And I mean, it's one of our favorite favorites. [Music] Moros Bakery. This is incredible here in Buer Park. You got to check it out. I'm so excited. We're in old Torrance and this is like Mayberry and I'm with Kirk Rosberg and Kirk everybody that has told me when I come to Torrance you got to check out the Torrance bakery. So you are the owner proprietor what have you created here? It sounds like a magical spot. It's been a wonderful ride. It's it's I don't know maybe we paid him off with cookies or donuts or something along the way. Free donuts. Yeah. Even though we've been so grateful to be around for 40 years, it's really we have to stay relevant and we have to keep moving. So, you're only as good as your last cookie, cake, or doughnut. So, I mean, it looks like you've got the whole block here. Tell me that Tell me the businesses that go down the block. Well, we start out at the far end here. We have our cafe. And then from there, we have our cake ordering area where people can kind of order their wedding, wedding cakes, birthday cakes, really what we call milestone events, which we take very seriously. And is it true I might get to decorate a cake. Is that true? Yeah. Stay tuned. You're going to nail it, too. Okay. Okay. Good. And then from there we have the rest of the bakery uh where we have anything from donuts to to cakes to cookies and anything that you could possibly want. But no bread. No bread. No bread. And what do people come in for the most? Is it the cakes or Great question. Our biggest seller are cookies. And in particular, we make this uh fudge chew cookie, which we'll see a little bit later. Fudge chew. It's an egg white cookie and no flour. Now, we can't call it gluten-free because there's flour in the air, but it would be a gluten-free if we didn't have that. So, Torren Bakery cake, we need a cake maker. This is Blanca. Blanca, come in. You ready for this? Oh my god. What are those? What is that? This is a sugar paper that we use for Wait a minute. Wait a minute. This is sugar. Yes. You can actually eat this. So, you can eat this? Yes. Oh my gosh. So, you can do it on the on the bottom. Oh yeah, I'll have no problem. You got this. I'm pretty sure you get to it. Oh yeah, this is a piece of cake. Which piece of cake? Oh, that is not easy. Well, just a little bit. So So I love yellow because my shoes are yellow. Matching with your shoes. Perfect. So how many cakes do you guys do a day? 300 cakes for a weekend. Wow. 300 cakes? Yeah. Come on. Wait a minute. 300 weekend. A weekend. Oh my god. That's what That's kind of our number. Here's here's when we got Liza. We're going to do one. So nice of you. Thank you. [Music] Liza's wasn't here. So this is what she would do to my cake. So I got to do it to hers. You got here. How great. Check out what I've done. I did this. I decorated this. You You did that. And that's sugar. Check Check this out. This is you. So they said, "Had you been here, you would have done that to me, so I should do it to you." And now I see why you wanted me to send you that photo. At least it's a flattering photo. You made me even more beautiful, Kirk. Oh my god. I'm going to gain 50 lbs. Cake fudge chew. Is that what this is called? It's a fudge chew cook. Yes, a fudge chew. That's incredible. And you have grown up born and raised in Torren. That's incredible. All 66 years of my life. And a and family business. And how many employees? 115. 115 people employed in a family business. We love that in the best of California. Check out the Torrance Bakery here in this beautiful hidden gem of Torrance. So, I hope you enjoyed that episode of Pat Patterson's Best of California, Sweet Tooth California. See you next time. I'm Pat Patterson and I love California. What's the best in your California city? Go to our website, bestofcal.tv, and tell us about it. We'll come cover you.