The story of impact-driven chocolate maker Tony’s Chocolonely has important
lessons for sustainability practitioners — which makes its story even sweeter.
If you missed this LinkedIn
post
(or the full
article)
by Sustainable Brands®, you’ll want to check them out. The story of
impact-driven chocolate maker Tony’s
Chocolonely has important lessons for
sustainability practitioners:
-
How values help attract customers and create business success
-
How to scale your positive impact on the world, even beyond what your own
business can support
Customers
In Chapter 4 of my book, The Value of Values (MIT
Press, 2024), I talk about how standing out helps customers find you. Tony's
mission — to end exploitation
in cocoa production and deliver 100% slave-free
chocolate
— makes it stand out. It stands out to conscientious
consumers;
to Tony’s “collegiate
changemakers”
— student movement-makers who network within their communities to share Tony’s
chocolate and raise awareness about issues within the cocoa industry; and even
to industry giants such as Barry Callebaut — which formed a strategic
partnership
with Tony’s to show that producing chocolate from fully traceable, ethically
sourced, sustainable cocoa is possible at scale (a collaboration highlighted in
the Netflix documentary,
“Rotten”).
Catalyst
Aligning Value Management and Regenerative Practices
Join us as Regenovate co-founders Chris Grantham and Adam Lusby lead an interactive workshop on how to rethink value in the context of regenerative innovation by linking value to the dividends and resilience that come to an organization from enhancing system health — Thurs, May 9, at Brand-Led Culture Change.
In Chapter 7, I tell the story of a company I worked with to take something it
was doing for itself — helping and offer it to others, scaling its impact and
creating a new revenue source. Tony's is doing that, too, through Tony’s Open
Chain — an industry-led initiative that’s
helping other chocolate brands transform their supply chains through transparency.
As Open Chain enables other companies to take advantage of its supply chain, it
helps Tony's help even more farmers — those supplying its own production and
those supplying other companies, as well. And the co-op fee paid by companies
using Tony’s Open Chain covers program costs and improvement at the partner
level.
Progress
Tony’s continues to make progress toward its mission: It’s paying living incomes to more farmers while
increasing its revenue (to over $150 million) and helping improve cocoa supply
chains — all while providing important lessons you can use to increase your
company’s impact. That makes its story even sweeter.
Published Mar 1, 2024 2pm EST / 11am PST / 7pm GMT / 8pm CET