Tony’s Chocolonely Expands U.S. Distribution With Key Online Listing

The ethical chocolate company founded in the Netherlands, Tony’s Chocolonely, has decided to expand its distribution in the United States with a major listing via Target.com nationwide, in addition to selected retailers across the country, writes Neill Barston.

The brand’s expansion follows a recent partnership with Pharrell Williams (pictured at the company’s recent online fair) and his organization Black Ambition, as well as the company’s release of its Sweet Solution bars, renewing calls to fight child labor in supply chains.

Since its founding in 2005, Tony’s has pursued a policy of raising awareness of inequalities within the chocolate industry, paying more for its bean sourcing, and working on the underlying causes of the work, which is growing. more in the spotlight globally.

In a recent interview with Confectionery Production, the company responded to concerns about its founding mission of delivering “slave-free chocolate” in relation to decisions to source cocoa from major producers in Ghana and the Côte d’Ivoire. Ivory, where a recent NORC from the University of Chicago found that 1.56 million children are still exposed to child labor.

As previously reported, the company said its decision to work in the two West African countries with large company Barry Callebaut since 2005 was to “show that it is possible to be fully traceable while working with a great processor ”, and that encouraging the entire industry to achieve the eradication of child labor was at the heart of its founding mission.

In a statement, the company said: “From the start Barry Callebaut believed in our mission and worked with us to set up a fully separate processing for our 100% traceable grains so that they are never mixed with ‘other grains. Working with Barry Callebaut allows us to further increase our production and allows us to develop Tony’s Open Chain by also processing 100% traceable cocoa beans from our mission allies, ”he said of his policy with Barry Callebaut, who himself has undertaken a number of initiatives to tackle the problem, including his Forever Chocolate program, aimed at helping lift 500,000 farmers out of poverty by 2025 – which remains a central issue linked child labor.

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