|  Ever wondered what
goes on inside the B&M bean factory? There’s a story between the sign on the
Portland landmark and the beans on the supermarket shelf. There’s a lot of history,
and there’s a group of longtime employees that run the place.
Standing in the lobby of the main building is like looking back into
history. A small pine tree pictured in a 1920’s rendering of the building now stands
as tall as the building. Don Gower, the plant manager, said they've cut the top off, but
the employees just won’t let them fell it. That was the overarching theme of our visit to Burnham & Morrill
Company. It’s a company that seems to act like a family with longevity in it’s
product and employees, and the ability to adapt their way through several owners and to
improvise within an old building. Don Gower, plant manager at B&M, has been with the company for
29 years, which is impressive, considering he’s only 50. He started out sifting flour
in the summer of ‘71 and stayed. (There’s no flour in their beans, it’s for
their brown bread.) B&M is a union shop. Until a couple of years ago, their junior
employee had joined the company in 1984. As he walked through the plant, Don would point
to people and say things like, “23 years”, or, “1978”, meaning how
long that individual had been with the company. Our tour began on the first floor, where they were bringing in jars.
Most of B&M’s products are sold in cans, but in the Midwest they like them in the
traditional looking brown bean-pot-shaped jars. The jars arrive in a single layer box, and
the box is opened upside down onto a conveyor. Workers inspect and sterilize the jars. The
jars go from the first to the second floor, single file, on a custom elevator. The beans
meet up with the jars later on, but first Don decided to skip up to the top floor where
the beans arrive in their dried form. Burnham & Morrill buys North American beans, arriving in railway
cars usually from Michigan and the Dakotas, and sometimes from Manitoba, Canada. They use
200,000 pounds of beans every few days this time of year. In the fall, they use the same
amount in four or five days. Don says they buy the best beans available, but B&M
cleans the dried beans further with several processes. The newest addition is an electronic eye that checks for color
differentiation. They also wash the beans in hot water, mainly to add a little weight
during the cleaning operations, and sift them through several screens with different sized
holes designed to either shake out smaller foreign objects from the beans or to shake the
beans out and leave larger foreign objects behind. Once the beans finally pass inspection,
they are funneled down through the ceiling below into the bean pots, where they are mixed
with sauce. When he came to area where the sauce is mixed, Don said, “This
is where we mix our secret sauce,” with a smile. Although the sauce is important, the
real difference is in the baking. In fact, Burnham & Morrill Company once went to
court over the process, back in 1927, against Friend Brothers of Melrose, Massachusetts. Although we all think of B&M baked beans, the company has a long
and varied history as a cannery operation. When George Burnham and Charles S. Morrill
founded the company in 1867, they packed and canned about fifteen items, including meat,
vegetables and fish. Baked beans were not on the list. They added corn in 1868, with the “Paris” label. At that
time the corn cannery was located in South Paris, Maine. The “Paris” label
did very well; with up to nineteen corn canneries going at one time. Until after World War
I, most corn was grown in New England. As a result of this regional shift in corn farming,
corn sales dropped and the “Paris” label became a regional item after WWI. During this downturn in corn production and sales, B&M was
developing their baked beans. This was another product that took years of work and
experimentation to perfect. B&M landed in court against Friend Brothers in 1927, over
the process patent. B&M won, leaving Friend Brothers confined to the New England
market. B&M launched a successful national advertising campaign. Ironically, B&M
now owns the Friend Brothers label as well, which they produce with a different sauce
recipe. All you have to do is cut a B&M bean in half and the difference
becomes clear very quickly. B&M beans are brown all the way through. Non-B&M beans
are not. That’s because B&M bakes their beans in small batches, stirring them by
hand halfway through. They have 76 genuine brick ovens today, each lined with a large cast
iron bean pot. Don reminded us, “The difference is in the bake!” After baking, the sauce and the beans are separated, and the sugar
ring along the top of the pot is scrubbed in “the bullpen”. This, along with
sifting flour and putting the pork cube in the cans is among the hardest jobs in the
plant. A funnel carries the baked beans down through the next floor below into the canning
operation. Have you ever wondered how that piece of pork makes it into the can?
It’s done by hand. Don explained that this is one operation they’ve been unable
to automate, along with scrubbing the sugar ring. Two people sit next to each other and
put a piece of pork in every other can as the cans pass on a belt. On the glass jar line,
one person does it. After the beans, pork and sauce are put in the can or jar, the lid
is placed on, and they are automatically stacked into layers and helped into huge
baskets. These baskets are lowered into pressure cookers called Retorts, four high.
Although only a few feet of these huge cookers show above the floor, they extend far below
foot level. The jars and cans are processed here anywhere from twenty minutes for the 8
ounce can to four hours for the gallon. After processing, they are sent for labeling, boxing, wrapping on
pallets and shipping. This is actually done in the building next door. There’s a
conveyor that moves the cans and jars from one building to the next, located in a covered
walkway. Once, the conveyer ran open outdoors and they used to have to run outside,
sometimes in the snow, if something jammed! The label is applied by machine with both hot
and cold glue, and, depending upon the product, the box is either formed around the cans,
or the cans are placed in the box. Eventually they all make it to a machine that arranges
the boxes into the appropriate formation, slides them onto a pallet, and shrink-wraps it
all together. The warehouse contains the end result: stacks of beans in that familiar red
and blue packaging. Burnham & Morrill continues to be run and staffed by local
people, although it is owned by B&G Foods. The
main focus is the production of their baked bean line, but the facility is also used as a
packaging plant for a few items, such as Ac’cent seasoning, and also as a
distribution center for these and other items, such as Polaner All Fruit spread. Since purchasing B&M from Pillsbury in March of 1999, some new
employees have been added to the roster. In addition, there are plans in the works for a
larger distribution center in Biddeford. |
Plant Manager Don Gower
|
Beans in the pot
