re: Hellmann's vs Blue Plate

probably told this story already.

Went to a Hellmans plant in New Jersey they had closed to buy some equipment. Their quart jar filling line would fill 600 jars a minute (glass jars). they had two emergency stop buttons on the line. pushing the "full stop" button would break about a fourth of the jars on the line, but it stoped the line "Bam" quick. It took four hours to clean the line of broken glass and mayo when this button was pushed. To push the "Stop Line" button took the line about 4 minutes to grind to a stop, but broke no jars. The plant ahad a silo that held 200,000 cracked eggs. They had four egg silos and 8 veggy oil silos.

They closed teh New Jersey plant because the newer plant in chicago could do all their mayo needs. As I recall, it filled 1200 jars a minute. The chicago plant had half pint, pint, quart, half gallon and gallon jar filling lines and I believe was originally desined to fill plastic jars.

1200 x 60 X 8 = 576,000 jars of mayo a shift, less QC samples. Back then I think they only ran one shift a day, then cleaned and batched the other 16 hours.