Description
Practically designed for a tourist surge, Celestial Seasonings welcomes visitors with open arms. While waiting for the tour, you can try any and all of their flavors of tea, which at current count number over 75. They've very thoughtfully placed an iced tea machine in the lobby also, so you can taste the delights of turning their product into an iced tea.

The original artwork that the company commissions for the boxes lines the walls in their rotating art gallery and the tour begins with a walk through the offices. Stacks of Celestial boxes litter employees' shelves and the atmosphere is light and jovial. The tour itself requires a hairnet, which definitely knocks this up a notch on the coolness factor. You see the process from the tea's arrival in the factory to sorting, mixing, bagging and packaging.

The most famous stop on the tour is the mint room. The room is huge with high ceilings and has a gigantic garage door that opens and shuts in front of it. They keep this room closed, because the aroma of the peppermint and spearmint are so strong that they would get into the other teas. Entering this room, my eyes began to water and I started coughing. I soon made a speedy exit determining that I was not strong enough to survive the mint room for more than 5 seconds. (They actually have t-shirts that say, "I survived the mint room.")

The tour exits into the gift shop (of course) and they have all of the products they make adorning every available space. People are happily tossing boxes of teas and factory seconds in their baskets. But then again if you're a tea drinker like myself, the selection is not only incredible, but also impossible to pass up.

Celestial Seasonings caters to the tourist making the tour and the purchasing of tea as easy as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if they researched how to make the tour efficient and welcoming. Definitely an interesting stop, because there aren't many tea companies that give tours, especially ones this large.