A tour of a working confectionery factory in St Petersburg

A working confectionery factory in St Petersburg lets visitors inside. Not a museum by the gate and not a shopping-mall "factory", but the actual workshops where sweets have been made since 1862. Tours run on weekdays at the K. Samoylova factory on Anglysky Prospekt — the former Georges Borman works — and daily at the Lyubimy Kray plant in Gorelovo, home of Posidelkino biscuits. Here is how to book, what to bring, and why your phone goes into a locker before the workshop.

The oldest sweet factory in the city

Grigory Borman, who traded as Georges Borman, founded the factory in 1862. He started with a small confectionery shop on Nevsky Prospekt, earned the title of purveyor to the imperial court and installed the first chocolate vending machine in St Petersburg. Today the plant is called the K. Samoylova Confectionery Factory: 164 years of continuous work, 611 staff, about 5,000 tonnes of sweets a year and 200 product lines, from Gvozdika and Leningrad chocolates to Vozdushny Potseluy marshmallow and Sladkaya Karusel jelly sweets. It has been part of the United Confectioners holding since 2003.

What the tour covers

The visit opens in a small museum — the history of chocolate and of the factory itself. Then the group puts on white coats and caps, listens to a safety briefing and walks into the workshops: first the biscuit and wafer floor, where biscuits, marshmallow and wafers are made, then the chocolate and jelly floor. The building has four production storeys and you watch confectioners at work in the room, not through glass. One workshop may be idle on the day of your visit.

Every participant leaves with a bag of factory products weighing around 2.5 kg.

Tours run every weekday at 9:30, 11:30 and 13:30 and last 1 hour 15 minutes. Booking in advance is compulsory: call +7 921 440-40-07 or message the factory tour group on VKontakte. The price is 2,300 roubles per person, the same for individual visitors; in a group of twelve or more, one accompanying adult pays 650 roubles and gets no gift. Payment is in cash on the day.

Rules to know before you go

This is a food production site with a security check, so the rules are stricter than on a city walk. Arrive 20 minutes early at Anglysky Prospekt 18 (the glass sliding doors); adults need a passport and six-year-olds a birth certificate, a photo on a phone will do. Jewellery is best left at home — a plain wedding ring, a cross and small stud earrings are allowed. Bags go into a locked changing room, and phones stay in the group's locker before the workshop: photography on the production floor is not permitted. The minimum age is six.

A second factory in Gorelovo

If the dates do not work, the Lyubimy Kray plant outside the city runs daily tours at 11:00, 13:00 and 15:00, lasting 1.5 hours, for children from five. You see the full biscuit cycle on lines rated at about 20 tonnes a day, visit the laboratory, take the tasting-panel test and try the whole range. Group tickets cost 1,950 or 1,550 roubles depending on the gift, family rates are 3,500 roubles for one child with two adults and 4,000 roubles for two children with two adults, and a single visitor pays 1,950 roubles. The address is Volkhonskoye Shosse 15, Gorelovo; bookings on +7 911 117-99-68.

Sources: United Confectioners holding, page of the K. Samoylova Confectionery Factory — history, address and production figures; samsladosti.ru — programme, schedule, visiting rules and price; the Lyubimy Kray excursion site — programme, rates, schedule and address. Prices and schedules change without notice — confirm when you book. Checked 11 September 2026.

Cover: a pre-1917 Georges Borman cocoa poster, public domain, Wikimedia Commons.