Unfortunately today is our last full day here in the Netherlands so some of my friends at I decided to go to a little bagel cafe to get breakfast. I got a BLT bagel and It was absolutely delicious!
After a great breakfast we had a speaker from Tony’s Chocolonely come and talk to about their initiative to a slave free cocoa industry. It was really interesting to hear her talk about the Tony’s open chain that gives back to cocoa farmers and invited other companies to join. Through this program Tony’s creates a contracts with a co-op and this contract is good for 5 years in hopes to renew in the future. Through the contact Tony’s provides farm mapping and tracing which complies with future food laws of cocoa. This also helps stop deforestation because Tony’s requires the farmers they work with to stop deforestation. They also prohibit child labor and check farms often to ensure they are following the rules. By doing this they reduced their child labor from 50% to 4% which is absolutely insane. Hopefully Tony’s mission will spread and more companies help to end child labor.
After the talk with Joke from Tony’s we went to Tony’s superstore. This was like walking to Willy Wonka’s factory. They had so much chocolate and any flavor you could possibly think of. They even had a make-your-own bar option if you still couldn’t find something you wanted. On one wall of the store, they had windows so you could see the workers making the chocolate which was really cool. These two activities with Tony’s gave us a very good idea about their supply chain from start to finish. How and where they source the beans, how those beans are used to make liquor, butter, and powder, and then we physically saw how that was made into chocolate.
The last thing we did was have a farewell dinner at an Indonesian restaurant. I’ve never had Indonesian food before and it was really nice to try something new. Plus it was tasty which was a nice bonus.
