Does Macy's Tell Gimbal's? Bet They Eat 'Em!

Gimbal's Fine Candies Gourmet Jelly Beans

If the company website is to be believed, the Gimbal family has been the purveyor of fine candies in the San Francisco area for four generations, though no word on how long they’ve been making Gimbal’s Fine Candies Gourmet Jelly Beans or whether they or that other company just up I-80 (Jelly Belly®) started making little beans with strong flavors first. Gimbal’s offerings are the typical mini-sized beans one expects to find with the “gourmet” label, although there’s no company name printed on the shell.

A “Jelly Bean” for the Coffee-Lover in Your Family

Trader Joe's Espresso Pillows

About the only jelly beans Mrs Fiend eats are the licorice ones that get left at her place on the kitchen table (someone has to eat them, and I usually don’t). That doesn’t mean she’s not a candy lover in her own way, but her drug of choice is chocolate – the darker, the better. So it was no surprise to find that, on her last visit to Trader Joe’s, she came out with the “adult” version of jelly beans: Trader Joe’s Espresso Pillows.

Jelly Beans the Old-Fashioned Way (Sort of...)

Great Value Jelly Beans (Walmart)

Not every jelly bean out there is “gourmet.” Heck, just a few decades ago, there was no such thing as a “gourmet jelly bean” (Jelly Belly® jelly beans are only about 50 years old and didn’t hit mainstream until during the Reagan presidency, 1980-88). About the only national brands in olden days were Brachs and Toms, and their beans were very little like what you get today – of course, they were also only about 49¢ a pound, too…