The social and environmental challenges associated with producing chocolate are
well-documented. Most of the chocolate (around 75
percent)
enjoyed worldwide originates from cacao trees grown in Ghana or Cote
d’Ivoire — two countries that have had “some of the worst rates of
intensification of deforestation in the world, for decades,” according to
Mighty
Earth.
Côte d’Ivoire has lost up to 90 percent of its forest cover, with a third said
to be down to cocoa as farmers clear tropical forests to make way for new cocoa
trees.
In addition to rampant deforestation, West African farmers commonly make use of
child
labor
— with family-run farms exposing children to working with dangerous tools and
harmful pesticides. Earlier this year, a TV
documentary
found children as young as 10 were harvesting cocoa in Ghana to be supplied to
one of the world’s biggest chocolate firms, Mondelēz International — which
owns Cadbury. A recent survey found that of the children living in
agricultural households in cocoa-growing areas within the two nations, 45
percent are engaged in child labor.
The problem is, we love the stuff. We have done so ever since early North
American settlers began cultivating the cocoa tree for its bitter beans 2,000
years ago. During Valentine’s week in the US, people eat 58 million pounds
of chocolate. As our love for chocolate grows, so does the pressure on the
environment and the impact on societies.
But what if there was a way of sating our appetite for chocolate without growing
a single cacao tree? What if chocolate could be produced without disrupting
increasingly vulnerable supply chains, ecosystems and communities?
Well, it can.
Step forward, WNWN Food Labs (pronounced
‘win-win’), a new food startup (launched during the pandemic) that is making
chocolate-free chocolate.
“It tastes like chocolate, it melts, snaps and even bakes like chocolate. But we
use absolutely no cacao,” co-founder Johnny Drain tells Sustainable
Brands® from his kitchen-come-laboratory in London. “The way cocoa
beans have been fermented and roasted has been refined over hundreds and
hundreds of years to come up with this delicious stuff we call chocolate. But
when I put my chemist hat on, I asked myself, ‘Why can’t you end up with that
same flavor profile, but just start with something different’?”
It is a question Drain has continued to ask himself since graduating with a PhD
in material science and a career spent in kitchens “fermenting things for chefs,
setting up R&D and developing new products.” As his starting point for WNWN’s
first product, he landed on British barley and Italian carob — the latter of
which comes from a pod of a tree of the same name and is rich in polyphenol
antioxidants, just like cacao.
“Taking these two very European ingredients, we figured out this funky,
high-science way to ferment and process them so that we end up with flavor
compounds that you also have in a chocolate.” The cacao-free chocolate contains
no added sugar (only what is produced naturally during the fermentation process)
and no dairy (although Drain says they could make a non-vegan version by adding
dairy). WNWN says its chocolate is also 85 percent less carbon-emitting than conventional
chocolate.
Drain’s company was born after ex-investment banker Ahrum
Pak slid into Drain’s DMs after a
mutual connection introduced the pair via Instagram. Reporting from her base
in Portugal, Pak says that she was happy to “escape the evil clutches” of
the investment world with ambitions to build a business related to food: “I
always wanted to work in a company that could potentially change industries or
people’s mindsets.”
She’s been doing exactly that with Drain since the pandemic hit. Drain explains
the pair started thinking about businesses around using food waste and
fermentation: “I trusted Ahrum and realized that we would make a great team. I’d
had this idea about developing chocolate without chocolate for a little while;
so, we both got very excited about it and ditched our other ideas.”
So, what’s the ambition for WNWN? Well, there’s a number of other companies
doing something similar, but Drain and Pak are the first to bring a cacao-free
chocolate product to market. It launched in May and sold out within a day, with
customers stating they would never have known they weren’t eating a real
chocolate bar.
“Ultimately, we want to produce a whole range of different chocolates — a
milk chocolate, a flavored bar … and we can control the flavor profiles with the
fermentation and processing that we do,” Drains says excitedly.
He also acknowledges the limitations of their venture in changing current
growing strategies and buying habits of what he calls the “Big Chocolate”
sector.
“Even if we grab 1 percent of what is a huge market, we wouldn’t be able to
impact the day-to-day functioning of cocoa farms,” he says. However, WNWN wants
to raise public awareness and shine a light on what’s happening in the sector.
“Our alternative chocolate is saying that this industry can function in a
different way — and it doesn’t have to be stuck doing things it has been doing
for 60 years, making billions of dollars a year off the hard work of farmers in
West Africa.”
“We’re not anti-Big Chocolate. We just really want chocolate to be given the
respect it deserves,” Pak adds.
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Content creator extraordinaire.
Tom is founder of storytelling strategy firm Narrative Matters — which helps organizations develop content that truly engages audiences around issues of global social, environmental and economic importance. He also provides strategic editorial insight and support to help organisations – from large corporates, to NGOs – build content strategies that focus on editorial that is accessible, shareable, intelligent and conversation-driving.
Published Jul 14, 2022 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST