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I fell in love with chocolate originally as a kid.
I loved Halloween candy.
But up until I was a young adult,
I didn't know where chocolate came from.
And so I volunteered as a conservation volunteer,
working with Cachian Mopan Mayan indigenous cocoa farmers.
And there were Howler monkeys and
you had this whole adventure in the rain forest.
My curiosity was off the hook.
I'm Joe. Founder and CEO of Theo Chocolate.
I'm Debra, vice president of sales and marketing
for Theo Chocolate.
My entire life I've been a daily chocolate eater,
but I think it wasn't really until I got to know Joe
that I started to understand the depth of the story of chocolate
and all of the social and environmental issues
surrounding chocolate.
I think it has special powers.
After my experience in central America,
I saw that social and environmental degradation
were really business problems.
And I wanted to help save the world by making chocolate.
And I got into the cocoa industry, importing cocoa beans
and then working with manufacturers to make chocolate,
and we were doing organic chocolate
here in the United States and in Europe.
But after doing that for several years,
I saw that it was most important to
control the brand and the message.
Control the manufacturing from the bean
all way to the finished product,
and the supply chain.
Because if I could build a vertically integrated business,
I had the best opportunity to affect
every part of the business and really create lasting change.
There were no other companies producing
organic fair trade chocolate because the
barriers to entry are so high in this industry.
If you wanted to go into the coffee business,
all you need to do is buy a roaster and
put it in your garage and you're done.
Chocolate is a very complicated product make,
so the majority of chocolate is made by only about
twelve companies in the whole country,
and they are doing such large volume
that they control not only the manufacturing
but distribution,
and they have extreme leverage on the producers.
We're really interested and care deeply about
where all of our ingredients come from.
Our business ethic is informed by our belief
that all life on the planet is interconnected.
That we need consumers to be healthy and well,
our farmers to be healthy and well,
the entire planet to be healthy and well
in order for us to be successful and profitable.
Fair Trade Certification is important for us to build trust
with our consumers that we do what we say we are going to do.
And we choose IMO Fair For Life as our
certification for fair trade.
What's great about Fair For Life is that
it is a certification that insures the economic
and social integrity of our entire supply chain,
from the cocoa farmers that we work with,
all the way through to our own factory operations.
I don't consider myself a whistle blower as much as,
let me put it this way the industry
considers me a nuisance.
What really we're doing is trying to give an alternative
to practices that have contributed to
social economic and environmental degradation.
The average cocoa Farmer earns less than a dollar a day
for their entire family.
And they have very little options
in cocoa growing regions to sell other cash crops,
and as a result they are beholden to an industry
that is very oppressive.
The cocoa price has been so low compared to
the cost of their production
that in west Africa, cocoa farmers have had
to resort to slavery.
One of the benefits of fair trade for cocoa farmers
is that it's a transparent negotiating system
that allows the farmers to improve the quality which
in turn delivers a much better price to them on the farm.
So we see this as a truly holistic approach to
not only the products we make
or accessing certain kinds of customers,
but really creating a profitable business model
that is having a beneficial impact on us and the planet.
Theo, for me is an example of what Joe and I envision
as enlightened capitalism.
We are the only organic fair trade certified
bean to bar chocolate factory in the United States,
which is pretty exciting so,
I'd like to say that we're
trying to define the intersection of artisan
world class chocolate making with sustainable practices.
I like to say it's doing good, while doing well.
And so what that means is that
we see ourselves as a triple bottom line company.
Which means we value people, the planet,
and profit in equal measure.
And none of those things suffer at the expense
of something else.
One of the most important steps that we've taken to
hold ourselves accountable in terms of the way that we treat
our own employees is we recently underwent
IMO certification for our own factories.
So what that means is that
we hold ourselves accountable to the same fair trade standards
that our farmers undergo.
So, we're subject to the same kind of the scrutiny.
The reason that is so important to us is because
we're very committed to transparency
at every level of our supply chain.
And so if we don't fulfill our own
and embody our own values here within the company,
within our own relationships with our own employees,
and then it's a really meaningless.
So, and that's an ongoing challenge for us.
By far the most exciting thing about Theo as we grow is that,
we've really begun to be a voice for change.
As we've developed a really loyal following for our products
and the story and the work that were doing
in the developing world,
it's given us a certain amount of credibility in terms of
what we think is necessary for change and finding platforms
to share that with people in really meaningful ways.
For me, that's really, really exciting.