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Tony’s Chocolonely, a B-Corp and Fairtrade certified company, exists to make chocolate 100% slave free. Not just its own chocolate, but all chocolate.

How Tony’s Chocolonely is Winning Fans in the U.S. by Pioneering Slavery-Free Chocolate

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Tony’s Chocolonely is a quirky brand that I’ve loved ever since I stumbled across their amazing store in Amsterdam - and heard about their inspiring purpose. You see, Tony’s Chocolonely, a B-Corp and Fairtrade certified company, exists to make chocolate 100% slave free. Not just its own chocolate, but all chocolate worldwide. It’s actually an impact company that happens to make chocolate.

Tony’s Chocolonely was founded in the Netherlands 2005 by three journalists from the Dutch TV show ‘Keuringdienst van Waarde’ after they discovered that the world’s largest chocolate manufacturers were buying cocoa from plantations that used illegal child labor and modern slavery.

Since then Tony’s Chocolonely (now available in the U.S. in places like Whole Foods) has dedicated its efforts to raise awareness about the inequality in the chocolate industry. They lead by example by building direct long term relationships with cocoa farmers in Ghana and the Ivory Coast paying them a higher price and working together to solve the underlying causes of modern slavery. They want to inspire the industry as a whole to make 100% slave free the norm in chocolate.

Tony’s Chocolonely Manifesto

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However, the year the chocolate industry signed the Harkin-Engel protocol was 2001, pledging to end the worst forms of child labor within 5 years. In 2010, after failing to meet their deadlines three times, the pledge was extended to reduce illegal child labor by 70% by 2020.

The 2020 numbers show that despite repeated industry promises to end this exploitation, 1.56 million children are working illegally in the cocoa supply chain, just in Ghana and Ivory Coast. On top of that there are 30.000 victims of modern day slavery in the cocoa industry in this region.

Tony’s Chocolonely has grown to become the largest chocolate brand in the Netherlands and is now available in multiple markets like the USA, England, Germany, Belgium and Scandinavia.

I caught up with Aidaly Sosa, their Head of Marketing to learn more about the brand.

Afdhel Aziz

Aidaly, thank you for making the time to chat to me today. For those people who don't know Tony's, explain to them what Tony's Chocolonely is all about.

Aidaly Sosa

Tony's Chocolonely is a mission-driven brand. We say we're an impact brand that sells chocolate, not the other way around. And we exist because— the origin of it is that a reporter named Teun van de Keuken was writing a story on the cocoa industry, and he realized that there's a lot of modern-day slavery and child labor - so different forms of forced labor - within the cocoa industry.

Then he started digging deeper into this, and he saw that the big companies were not being held accountable for this. That's when he started Tony's Chocolonely. And he was like, "Okay, I'm going to prove to the big brands that we can create a chocolate that has a clean supply chain." So that there's no modern-day slavery or child labor in the supply chain. And he did this, and the first batch was sold out very quickly.

It's time to vote

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Fast forward to now, we continue to be driven by that same mission, and we continue to basically fight the good fight to eliminate forced labor from the cocoa industry, and to make sure that the farmers earn a living wage so that they are not forced to have their children be involved in the farming, and all of that. So that it's safe. We're very committed to that. We work a lot with cooperatives in Ghana and Ivory Coast because that's where the majority of the cocoa beans come from. And we're here to make a difference and lead by example, to show that it can be done in a different way.

Aziz

Amazing. I love the story. Why is it Chocolonely? Was he lonely when he created it because nobody else was doing it?

Sosa

That's exactly it. One thing is that his name is Teun, which is very hard to pronounce in different languages, so he made that into Tony. And the Chocolonely was because he was a lone soldier in this fight.

Aziz

That's too funny. I've always wanted to ask that question. And talk to us about the statistics around child labor in the supply chain, especially in chocolate. The statistics are kind of staggering, right?

Sosa

Yes. Right now there is around 1.56 million people that are in forced labor in the cocoa industry. We really work hard to raise awareness around this. It's not about what we want to sell, we see our chocolate as a medium to really make people aware of these numbers.

It's kind of like the blood diamonds debate, when that came up, and people were able to understand these things came from conflict, right? So in this age of conscious consumerism, when people care about who makes their stuff, it's kind of eye-opening to see.

Aziz

So, the major chocolate companies have said it's kind of impossible to police the supply chains in order to make sure that their chocolate is slavery-free. Do you agree with this, or do you feel like there's more they can do?

Sosa

From Tony's, we always think there's more that can be done. Much more. We are aware of the steps that have been made over time, but this problem still exists. And there's an agreement that was signed in— I think it was 2001, called the Harkin-Engel Protocol, where the big chocolate companies made a pledge to eradicate forced labor out of their supply chain. And they were supposed— they had a deadline to do it over a few years. And now we're reaching the 20th anniversary of this pledge, and it's still not done. These problems still exist. So we really think that we might be moving in the right direction, but there's more that can be done.

Aziz

Very cool. And Tony's is such a fun brand, as well. This is the other thing that struck me. You're talking about something which is very deep and meaningful, which is child labor, but the brand itself is colorful and playful. Was that a conscious design decision?

Sosa

Absolutely. Because we know that the issue is a very dark and sad issue, so we wanted to talk about it, but in a very colorful way. And we always say that we're very serious about people and crazy about chocolate. So we really want people to see that in every execution of the brand we are crazy about chocolate. We have a very fun way of communicating. And our packaging design and everything that we design is very fun to show the crazy side of the brand.