Unfortunately I dont think there is a specific setting that will help you, it would be great if there were a maintain inner volume option or something.  That would be useful for things like this, or pillows and the like.

You could however adjust the material settinhs to make the beans less prone to collapsing, though I don't think that they will stay completely rigid.

One option might help, though it is a little lateral :).  If you add a cloth plane under the top layer of beans, so it is part of the dynamic cloth item, then when you clothify it, add the beans to the hard decorated group.  Set the cloth sim to collide with the ground and the lower beans.

When the sim runs the cloth part will fall and deform over the lower beans, but the upper beans will maintain shape and stay over the cloth part.  Make the cloth invisiblel in the material settings and you should get something of a decent effect.

Once it is run you may need to adjust the y position of the simulated cloth, probably down a little to account for collision offset.

Hope that works

John :)

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