 Hi My name is in so and I'm the Chief evangelist of Tony Shoccoloni. I probably have the best job in the world Because I get away with rambling all day long about chocolate whether I'm at home or in the office and can call it a job actually and Get paid at the end of the month a fair salary, too So I'm here today to talk to you about cocoa about chocolate and the company called Tony Shoccoloni Chocolate I think is is is a magical product. It's I think it's the solution to just about everything Because bear with me it's a Thursday and And It's been raining all week long and your wife was horrible and your kids were killing each other Probably the only thing to fix that is a good bar of chocolate Or it's a Thursday and it's been lovely weather all week long Your wife was amazingly nice to you that week and your kids were writing poetry in the corner Bear with me. It's storytelling And and probably the one thing to really celebrate that lovely week is a good bar of chocolate So, yes, it's a magical solution to everything So it's a it's a Thursday, right? I said you go to the supermarket And some retail magic happens there because for some reason you're always in the longest queue, right and Right there strategically positioned is the shelf with chocolate And you're thinking okay horrible week or good week, whatever. I deserve a good bar of chocolate. So you take a bar of chocolate So let me ask you a question first though. Who puts chocolate on their shopping list? consistently There's always a couple of hands and always the ladies the hands that go up first quickly and eagerly But chocolate is an impulse product, right? So so you buy a bar of chocolate and something logistically funny happens then because normally the stuff that you put in your shopping basket last and Up in the bottom of your shopping bag Pure logic logistics. There's two exceptions. There's eggs and That one bar of chocolate So you're driving home with the groceries next to you in your hybrid or electric car and and And And on top is that electric that chocolate bar And you're thinking it's Thursday the bar will probably make it home and then when I really deserve it Friday evening when I'm All laid out on the sofa watching some stupidity like the voice of hollanda or the voice of the UK probably same thing Then I'm gonna eat it but no no no because At the first traffic light that chocolate bar starts whispering your name It's true, right? You've been there And at the second traffic light you're thinking You're actually having a good conversation with that bar by then and you think whatever It wasn't on the shopping list anyhow, right? golden wrapper and then the bling bling of beautiful chocolate and Then that moment happens very quiet and you take a bite And you're right there in your happy zone right just you and your bar of chocolate and Everything is fine and perfect. I won't I won't I never do trust me It's right here for you and the last thing you want when you're in that happy zone is to Remember that one Dutch guy that once came to a conference in Brighton Tells you about the really dark side of chocolate because there's a strong contrast between that utter happiness that you're experiencing in your happy zone at that moment when you're eating chocolate and harsh reality of child labor Modern slavery in making that chocolate and that's my role to tell you today about that reality now there's good news and slightly Let's say good news. I should say right bad news The good news is you're obviously all well. I was going to say going home with the chocolate but I don't think we're reaching that point anymore and The the lesson news is that that chocolate comes with a price and that price is Knowledge consciousness and I'm gonna tell you the story about chocolate in the next 15 minutes That's the price for the chocolate but bear with me Cocoa grows on trees around the equator so a Little bit comes from Asia. There's a little bit from Central and South America what originally came from but most of the cocoa comes from Western Africa From millions of tiny farms that hardly any big plantations. It's all tiny cocoa On the other side of the value chain There's billions of consumers like you and I who just want to be able to eat a lovely bar of chocolate without any sense of guilt every day in your life, right? In the middle of that value chain, there's only a handful of companies that produce chocolate from cocoa It's Nestlé Mars Cargill Colobauts Hershey's Mondelez Meiji a little bit Tony Shokolani And that's where the problem lies because it's in their benefit to keep the prices of cocoa low in our opinion Inhumanly low because how does that look of a bar that's sold in the supermarket and on mainland Europe? for two Euro 65 No more than 12 cents actually go to the farmer that grows the cocoa An average farmer grows about a thousand kilos of cocoa beans a year on a price last year And unfortunately prices have plummeted recently What of a price last year for around 1 euro 30 per kilo that means? 1,300 euros of revenue per year Which with a wife and on average four kids means that they live on about 60 cents a day each Which is well below the poverty level of two US dollars for Ghana and Ivory Coast Two countries in Western Africa Ghana and Ivory Coast Produce about 60 percent of all cocoa in the world That's grown on about two and a half million Farms now that wasn't easy to find out that was too late university who did this for us Why because there's no Chamber of Commerce where they go to to subscribe and the farms get divided by to the sons when daddy dies, etc But there's about two and a half million farms in Ghana and Ivory Coast Almost farms is about 2.3 million kids that work there and We don't mind if those kids Would go to school Come home and pick up a couple of cocoa beans In harvest season and help mom and dad Provide with a little bit more income for that little farm But unfortunately, that's not reality because 90% of these kids work in little illegal circumstances work with chemicals work with sharp machetes and don't go to go to school and the worst cases is about 90,000 kids that are taken away from their parents sold off as modern slaves and Are subject to human trafficking and we find that ridiculous in 2017 modern slavery for a product that nobody actually needs its chocolate Now these are statistics, but let me introduce you to a couple of these boys Yes, he comes I'm a felice. Yes, sir. Yes, I've been working as a person in Kakao 1989 2003 Kakao In 2003 I'm a papi. I'm a forfeit to travel. I'm not a papi You can't force it to travel. You can't force it to travel You know, I'm not a little bit. Okay, they look like And we'll let you see I'm cosy I'm a parent. I don't give up cosy. I don't parent I'm just you've been you've been mad very well. I can't if I change the Now these boys Are sold off or taken away or or Lured into Ghana and Ivory Coast from working a fossil under false pretenses of being able to earn money At about the age of eight nine or ten The age of 17 or 18 they're dumped at the sides of big cities because they might just become too strong for the farmer to control But they've been robbed of the whole childhood. I probably even robbed of the whole future now If you Remember that there's only a handful of companies in the middle of that value chain of cocoa Then you might think The problem is easily solved in that case, right? If there's only a handful of companies that lead to this problem so in 2001 there were two American senators called Center Harkin and Center Engel that set up the Harkin Engel protocol Which was meant to eradicate the worst forms of child labor in the cocoa value chain within ten years time and It was signed by all CEOs of these big companies in the middle of that value chain Not just on behalf of their companies, but also in their personal name now unfortunately This was a so-called non-binding agreement Now there was times that I told my wife that I felt like my marriage was a non-binding agreement That didn't get me too far. I can tell you So the Harkin Engel protocol Was bogus and in 2005 there was a Dutch Television show. I think the UK equivalent would be food watch or something like that Dutch investigative journalistic program looking at the let me put this bluntly in Dutch the bullshit behind the reality behind the bullshit of marketing and They wanted to see what had become of the Harkin Engel protocol almost halfway through the time span of that time ten years and they realized that Nothing had changed even worse Nothing had been done actively towards change and the journalist done from the coca from the Kearingsens van Bader this television show Now he's the kind of Dutch guy that gets really angry within say three minutes So you can imagine how he Felt standing outside of the gates of Col about in Belgium for two hours with nobody wanted to speak to him He was furious He went on to a vivier the headquarters of Nestle the Lake Geneva and The the press lady came out said hello, I'm near from the Gaker mister from the kitchen How are you doing a cup of coffee cup of tea? We're not gonna talk to you though, and he said but How do you even know that I'm here? And she said well, I got a phone call from Belgium saying that there was a quite a critical journalist coming our way Just imagine what's going on in a valley chain of two of the biggest competitors call each other that there's a journalist on this one But don't didn't have any footage and he makes television programs He didn't have any footage because nobody wants to talk to him so turn thought of a smart move and he ate 10 different chocolate bars with a camera on him of brands that he was sure that there was child slavery somewhere in a value chain and He called 1 1 2 is that the alarm number in the UK too so he called 1 1 2 Won't picked up. He said You have to come and pick me up Because I'm complicit to slavery. I'm a chocolate criminal. It's quiet on the other end of the line And she said why? Well, I just ate 10 bars of chocolate her first reaction was laughter. She said don't worry, sir I do that as well once a month And then said no, no, no, that's not my problem My problem is is that according to Dutch law If I'm aware of criminal activities in the value chain of a product that I'm buying I'm responsible for the criminal activities in that value chain. It's called fencing if I buy a relatively cheap bicycle from a relatively Not well-smelling guy in a park in Amsterdam. I Can rest assured that it's not a secondhand bicycle. It's a stolen bicycle And I'm responsible for the theft of the bicycle now if I'm aware of child slavery, which is illegal And I'm aware of it in chocolate and I eat that chocolate then you have to come and pick me up because I'm a chocolate criminal now You probably understand that turn wasn't taken too seriously on that day So he had a court case set up against him He took a very or he hired a very expensive lawyer Which was a first for the lawyer too by the way to get somebody into jail instead of Keeping somebody out of jail and turn had a court case set up against himself and in a Court of appeal. I think it's called turn in the end wasn't convicted and the judge said Morally, you're completely right legally Juditially, I can't convict you Because first of all all Dutch people eat chocolate all day long So it will be very quiet in the streets of Holland and To I can't prove the direct causality Between the beans picked by come Herman from the movie that you just saw who was flown in as a witness in the court case And the chocolate that you ate yourself Now we never realized before that moment that if you buy a hundred percent fair trade chocolate bar There's no guarantee that there's a hundred percent fair trade cocoa beans in there Because cocoa is a mass-balanced product. It's like green energy from your wall outlet You don't get a hundred percent green energy from your wall outlet even though you buy a hundred percent green energy from your electricity company you add to the mix now Turn didn't have Television footage and he didn't have this conviction that he was waiting for so turn thought you know what? I'll change the system from the inside and I'll start my own little chocolate company called Tony's Chocolonely Tony's for the international name for turn and Chocolonely for our lonely battle in the chocolate industry We had no idea we were so naive We wanted to launch a bar in an alarming color, which is obviously red Now I don't know whether it's the same the UK but in Holland red means dark dark chocolate And blue is milk chocolate Now we launched this one milk chocolate because that was the chocolate we bought 5,000 bars of color about in the beginning And people were all over there So when we then launched our dark chocolate while we maintained that I might fuck for the Dutch people and I put it in a blue wrapper And that's how Tony Chocolonely was born a tiny company But with a huge mission to not just make our own chocolate 100% slave free but to make all chocolate worldwide 100% slave free and We're a small company. We still consider ourselves a small company. There's only 70 of us But This year we're becoming the biggest chocolate brand in the Netherlands but we're still holding on to our roots of this journalistic background and We love this quote by Anita Roddick the founder of the body shop who once said if you think it's something small Can't make a difference try sharing your room with the mosquito And we're the mosquito in the chocolate business We're constantly buzzing and stinging in the years of the chocolate industry. That's also the reason that We have this KPI of 50% growth each year because we really want to be able to make an impact and Normally when you become market leader it becomes tough to maintain that KPI. So you go it's national Logistically normal will go to Belgium for us and then Germany and Scandinavia But we always say if you want people to listen to you then make some noise in the backyard Some of these big brands have their headquarters in the US and have their main turf market in the US So we figured nah Belgium we love them, but we're gonna go to the US It's making even worse when we were considering where are we gonna launch our headquarters? Which was a two-person headquarters until five months ago, but still Sounds good. I had course We were thinking okay in New York short flight times little time difference But hey, maybe LA great weather and who doesn't want to be Hank Moody Or San Francisco funky town, but some of these big brands have their headquarters in Portland, Oregon Which is all the way out there at the other side of the world for us And the worst time difference ever because the moment that my US colleagues go into the office It's exactly the minute that we walk out of the office, but we figured have we're gonna launch in Portland, Oregon So we're sticking to that mosquito thing of ours Now how do we do this? We have a very simple three-step Strategy the first is that we're convinced that if chocolate lovers and Retailers hand-in-hand simply ask for more responsible products than the producers will have to follow suit so My 11-year daughter always talks about her BFFs You know that term the best friends forever We call them SFFs at Tony's so serious friends forever We want to make all chocolate lovers aware of the mishaps in the chocolate industry And how do you do that? Well, for example simply by communicating on the inside of our wrappers You know the 1980s sustainability thing. You always said print double-sided. That's gonna save the world. Well We print the inside of the labels and explain our story And why on the label I'll get back to that later The second step in our strategy is that we want to show the industry that it can be done They said when we started Cocoa is a mass-balanced product and it's been like that for centuries. How the hell are you gonna make cocoa traceable to the source? We said well, we'll show them that it can be done and since 2011 our cocoa mass was fully traceable back to Corporations in Ghana and Ivory Coast that we work with and why Ghana and Ivory Coast because the problem is simply the biggest over There's other brands that say we have slave-free chocolate But if you really look at the ingredient panel, it's often cocoa beans from Central South America where the problem simply is non-existent So we work together with six corporations now in Ghana and Ivory Coast with about five to six thousand farmers And from the moment that their beans Get into the corporation. They're put into Tony's chocolate only bags and they get through the normal Logistics chain, but we we own the beans. We know where the beans come from directly Why do we want that because we want to be able to pay a higher price directly to the farmers? Because the whole source of the problem of child slavery comes from the Humongous poverty over there So we don't want to just pay the fair trade premium because we are fair trade certified But that's not enough for these farmers to reach a living income. It's about a 10% premium on top of the market price And that's not enough we pay another 15 to 20% and this year a lot more because we want to balance out The fact that the prices have plummeted To get these farmers to a living income Thirdly, we notice that these farmers are afraid to invest in their farms because they have a very short time frame that they know That they can sell their beans Which is mostly a guarantee of maximum a year and we say if you do business with us We'll give you a guarantee of five years that if you sell your beans to us Then you can sell them for the next five years at least and not exclusively You can sell them to anybody else if you want to and we encourage that even because we don't want them fully dependent on us So we go for long-term relationships and why five years because it takes about five years for a cocoa plant to become a cocoa tree to produce cocoa beans Fourthly, we notice that the yield on their farms was very low So we help them through education programs better fertilization programs to simply get a higher productivity to reach that living income and Fifthly, we help them to form strong corporations together to get more economies of skill when they buy machinery for example And but also to have a stronger voice towards those buyers in the middle of that value chain Now thirdly we want other companies to not just copy what we do but to improve what we do So we want to inspire other companies to act. That's why we have our chocolate made at Calabas, which is the biggest Fluid chocolate producer in the world and not just in our in our garage because that way we can show the Competition that it's a scalable thing you can do a great example was in 2016 when we convinced Calabas to invest 1.6 million euros in their own plant for us to make cocoa butter fully traceable and Since we had cocoa mass traceable in 2011 the whole industry said Fine Tonys, but cocoa butter is a no-go because it's no use because it's just fat and it has no taste So all chocolate that Calabas makes uses the same generic cocoa butter But then we can't trace it back to the source and we can't pay the premium on the cocoa butter So we kept pushing and pushing and pushing and we convinced them since 2016 all cocoa content in our bars It's fully traceable back to the farmers so we can pay the premium to the farmers where it belongs Now there's other brands by the way that are copying on us like hell recently Yeah, there's a traditional brand called for God in Holland Which is simply copying all our recipes and then all our colors of our packaging and we invited them two weeks ago We said guys you're doing a great job copying everything copy our business model, too, and seriously. They're coming over next week So we could have become an NGO we could have become an activist, but we became a company Where yes, we want to make profit, but profit for us or making a profit for us is not a goal for us it's a mean towards a goal of a hundred percent slave-free chocolate and We do that with this slogan that says crazy about chocolate and serious about people now We're really really really crazy about chocolate. We launch the weirdest recipes from our kitchen So the first thing you see when you're walking to our office in Amsterdam is the kitchen with Eva Who comes up with our recipes? We always have this argument who has the coolest job in the world? She who comes up with the recipes or I who get to talk about them? At a great anecdote the other day was that now that we get to make our own chocolate bars in the office So I was making my and we try to come up with the weirdest stuff I want to freeze dried big mac in my bar one day, and sorry sorry guilty pleasure Or freeze-dried pizza pepperoni in the bar that's gonna be a hit someday anyway And I was talking about this and the colleague next to mine was was cutting up marshmallows and bacon And I said you just a bit too soon Because Ava started laughing as she turned around and opened her fridge with all secret samples and she had a sample with milk chocolate with crystals of maple syrup and crispy fried bacon, and it was Absolutely delicious. It's probably gonna be turkey bacon someday to make it halal, but we'll see So we're really crazy about chocolate. We're launching new recipes Constantly and when you come into our office in Amsterdam, you never ever leave without chocolate Just imagine the smile that our postman has on his face every single day So this is an open invitation I come during office hours by the way Another anecdote because we opened this tiny little shop in our office just for fun and we figured okay we work in the shop ourselves and a half a day a month and We figured okay about 12,000 euros revenue a year. Maybe we did 60,000 euros revenue in two and a half months It was crazy It's packed around the holidays and everything and and people complaining because they go there in the weekends with their kids And then it's closed because it's our office Get really angry lovely any Americans here I have sorry for that then and and I'm half American by the way, but the other day we had Americans walking into our store saying it's amazing. You've got this brand in Holland too now We said yeah, yeah, yeah So crazy about chocolate, but we're serious about people First of all in the list of series about people is our own team and that might sound slightly narcissistic But we believe that huge mission that we have of a hundred percent slave-free chocolate worldwide can only be reached By the most committed passionate and happy people So we work our butts off, but we make it really fun to work at Tony's So one perk is that you get to take away as much chocolate each and every day she can physically carry every day and To help you compensate that you get free running shoes every year And we have or we used to have a BMI body mass index bonus Which then we thought was slightly maybe over top so now it's called the maintain your BMI bonus Which is more politically correct during the year Some employers don't like it if you become pregnant. We applaud it And you get a thousand euros cash from the day your baby is born If you make a baby with somebody within Tony's then you each get a thousand euros cash That's all right, that's our incentive for the Friday afternoon drinks And if there's anything you want to celebrate at Tony's you run up the stairs in our office And there's this red alarm button on the wall But when you whack it all Disco lights go on and our logo starts flashing and people all start cheering. They have no idea for what? But they're all happy and that's important. She got people happy That made us the best employer of the Netherlands two years ago, which we were really proud of Secondly on our list of serious about people is obviously the farmers that we work with the farmers that we build long-term Relationships with we find it amazing that when we're in Ghana and Ivory Coast, and we're permanently represented in Ghana and Ivory Coast To be able to build those long-term relationships We find it amazing that there's a couple of these big brands that never ever show themselves there They just buy cocoa beans from intermediates and never show themselves Take that opportunity if you ever speak to somebody from one of the big competitors And you speak to do marketing management just ask them straight up. How often have you been to Ghana and Ivory Coast? Just ask them one question. It probably won't be a nice drink And we also find it amazing that Well, when we go to Ghana and Ivory Coast, we always fly on hand luggage and we fill our suitcases with our chocolate bars Because there's generations of cocoa farmers that have worked there that often never have tasted the end product of chocolate So secondly obviously the farmers that we work with Thirdly the consumers that like our chocolate if you Call Tony Chocolonely, you never get this stupid switchboard that tells you press one to speak to human being press two if you're sure Best three to wait another 20 minutes now if you call us you get to speak to my two office managers Paul and Kisha And if their phones are busy then all phones in the whole office ring at the same time Because we find it important to talk to consumers that want to talk to us They take the time to reach out to us that why shouldn't we take time to just respond? So that's consumers fourthly the retailers that sell our bars So those are the big retailers or all the retailers nowadays in the Netherlands other than the The Lidl's and all these And they'll has in Belgium now and quite proud that whole foods in the US is probably going to go national really soon and Fifth are the people that make our bars So that's call about who makes the couverture the fluid chocolate and Kim's and I'll tell you us that make the finalized the bars And the people that wrap the bars now if you Hear this story about how unequally divided the value chain of cocoa is and it's Where to realize that chocolate bars for the last centuries have always had these boring Excel spreadsheet shape And I I tend to not slag off competition, but if you also believe in purple cars then you Then you might put your brand name on each and every single block of chocolate just in case the consumer might forget Halfway through the bar what brand of chocolate he's eating We find that ridiculous, but when we came up with our idea of the unequally divided chocolate bar Well, there's not any form of market research that you can do that tells you that's a good idea to unequally divide your chocolate bar I can tell you well, we take a lot of decisions from the gut and Well when we launched unequally divided chocolate bar We realized that perhaps a bit of market research could have been useful Because our inbox was full of complaints internet was exploding and our phone was ringing off the hook A good example was this one mother that said my children used to live in perfect harmony And Then you guys come up with an unequally divided chocolate bar and they're always bickering up And there's not one piece in our bar that has the same weight as another piece There's been a couple of math students last year that did a thesis on how to divide a Tony's chocolate bar between two Three and four people. I love that Must have been a great study for them too, but But on a serious note What we did is we tried to get in touch with each of these people who had a complaint directly back then To explain why we made our chocolate bar unequally divided Because at Tony's we don't do any paid media So there's never been an ad of Tony's chocolate We as I tend to say do online social media we do on pack and we do on stage, which is me But we explained why we made our bar unequally divided because it tells the story of the cocoa industry in its purest form It's a discussion piece if you open a bar chocolate people will always start talking about why it's unequally divided So for the few people that haven't finished their part bars, please do so tonight at home share that story Not too many people know though that we hid the map of Western Africa in our chocolate bar So that's Ghana every every crossing down on the left and then I jumped to the right There's Nigeria and Cameroon and in the middle. There's a nice little anecdote because When we launched unequally divided chocolate bar We had a problem Because at Tony's we love whole hazelnuts and The two countries in the middle are Togo and Benin and those are two sovereign independent countries But neither in the block of Togo Nor in the block of Benin Would fit a whole hazelnut So we had a strong political discussion in the office because all political colors are represented in our office and we said so what are we gonna do are we gonna respect the certainty of Togo and Benin and Crunch up our hazelnuts like our competitors do Or are we gonna respect our love for whole hazelnuts and just join Togo and Benin into one block and As you may have seen already the hazelnut won that battle And we just don't tell this story too often in Western Africa That ladies and gentlemen is how we believe as a small company together with consumers and retailers and other Chocolate producers we can really make a dent in a rusted old industry And as I said in the beginning that the chocolate that you're already eating comes with a price Because as Sartre once said once you know you can't unknow and once you're aware you're responsible and once you're responsible It's up to you to act so next time you had a Horrible week and it's Thursday or Maybe you had a great week and it's Thursday and you're standing in that line at the supermarket And you're celebrating or fixing a week Then please realize that any purchase you make is a vote for the world you want to live in. Thank you very much