Celebrating 10 years of measuring impact – and the results are in..
Crack out the confetti 'cause we're celebrating a *decade* of measuring our impact, openly sharing our ups and downs, and putting our big ambitions out there for the world to see – and support.
Crack out the confetti 'cause we're celebrating a *decade* of measuring our impact, openly sharing our ups and downs, and putting our big ambitions out there for the world to see – and support. It's the 10th anniversary of our annual FAIR report! And this one ain't no different. It's packed full of impact insights that prove what we're doing works. The biggest news? Our way of working substantially drives down child labor. Heck yeah! Read on for the full lowdown.
Finding child labor means fixing it. That's why we've adopted the Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS) since 2017. And last year we found that Tony’s cocoa sourcing model drives endemic child labor down from >50% to <5%. Woah!
In fact, the longer we work with partner co-ops* and farmers, the lower the rate of child labor. At our long-term partner co-ops, the percentage of children in child labor was 4.4% in the past year. While at our 2 newer partner co-ops, the percentage of children in child labor was 52.8% in the past year – reflecting the alarming industry-wide average. Quite a difference, huh?
All cases of child labor are in the process of being fully remediated and closed. And we're very happy to report that this is happening at a faster rate than before: 9-12 months compared to 24 months.
Here we grow..
It's been a biiig year for beans! We sourced 14,002 metric tons of 100% traceable cocoa beans. That's 14,002,000 kg or 350 humpback whales or 2 million disco balls. A choco-lot!
And you know what they say.. More beans = more impact! As a result of all that bean sourcin', 14,763 cocoa farmers were positively impacted last year. 5,833 more than the year before! We paid them all a higher price for their cocoa to enable them to earn a living income. How much higher, we hear you ask.. 61% higher than the national price set by the government in Côte d'Ivoire. And 22% higher than the national price in Ghana.
While success for us means improving farmers' livelihood, it also means growing as a business. 'Cause the 2 go hand in hand. So we're proud as punch to have grown by 21% over the past year. We also invested €8,233,158 – 6.2% of Tony’s total revenue – into impact initiatives.
More allies mean more impact
Our model is here for the takin'. We want other chocolate companies to source cocoa using Tony's 5 Sourcing Principles. And now they can – and do! Last year Ben & Jerry's, The Flower Farm and PLUS Supermarkets became the latest Mission Allies to join Tony's Open Chain initiative. They're in good company. Alongside Albert Heijn, ALDI, Jokolade, Vly Foods, and us at Tony's, we now have 8 Mission Allies committed to making all chocolate 100% slave free.
But Tony’s Open Chain currently only reaches 0.5% of the West African cocoa market. So, to increase our impact and really change up the chocolate industry, we need to source more traceable beans at a higher price. One way to do that: get more Tony's Open Chain partners on board (leave that with us!). The other way: source more beans for our own bars. To put it frankly – that means we gotta sell more chocolate.
Calling all Choco Fans!
Your mission for 2023? Share our chocolate and our story. Buy our bars for yourself, your friends, fam and friendly strangers in the street. And when you do, tell 'em what an impact they're making with every bite. 'Cause it's only together that we can end illegal labor in cocoa. Are you in?
*Psst.. A co-op (or cooperative) is a collective of farmers who sell their cocoa together and jointly share the profits and benefits. A long-term partner co-op means we've worked with them for at least 5 years. We currently work with 5 long-term partner co-ops and 4 newer partner co-ops.