Heh, my wife was the maintenance supervisor for the Missouri Unilever plant that makes Talenti (well, not Unilever anymore). The same plant also makes Breyer's,

Heh, my wife was the maintenance supervisor for the Missouri Unilever plant that makes Talenti (well, not Unilever anymore). The same plant also makes Breyer's, Magnum bars, Choco Tacos, Popsicles, and various other novelties. She frequently complained about the Talenti line having issues. When it was acquired they had contractual responsibilities to produce the gelato a certain way. One thing I remember is it used sugar in granular/powdered form, whereas all the other ice creams used a syrup. So they had giant hoppers of sugar, which of course are a big explosion hazard so there was a lot of equipment around that to keep it from blowing up. I do remember the tight lids thing, heh. They were well aware... Ben & Jerry's is also a Unilever brand but manufactured in Vermont (but largely not the one that everyone tours). I think that one is even more complicated because of all the little mix-in ingredients and stuff. And I remember at one point they had these "pint slices" which were packaged as rectangular prisms and had to be cut by enormous, very sharp knives, which caused a fair number of worker injury events. Since then she's moved on to manufacturing other things. As a purely digital guy, I'm always fascinated by the "real world" things that physical goods have to deal with.