Category: Resources

An Interview with a Chocolate Retailer

Hello and welcome to The Poppy Podcast. I’m your host, Poppy. Today, I’m speaking to Veronica Hui, who runs Bittersweet, an ethical chocolate company that goes the extra mile to guarantee the quality and fairness of its chocolate bars. 

An Interview with a Chocolate Retailer 

Transcript

Poppy:

Hello and welcome to The Poppy Podcast. I’m your host, Poppy. Today, I’m speaking to Veronica Hui, who runs Bittersweet, an ethical chocolate company that goes the extra mile to guarantee the quality and fairness of its chocolate bars. 

(dial tone)

Poppy:

Hi, Veronica. How are you? Thank you for speaking with me about chocolate!

Veronica:

My pleasure. I can talk about it all day. Chocolate is my favorite thing in the world.  

Poppy:

Can you tell us about Bittersweet, and how it came about?  

Veronica:

Sure. Back in 2010, I decided to make chocolate that’s true to its taste, no additives or flavoring, no milk, and very little sugar. But I realized that the quality and variety of cocoa I could get in the U.S. was limited. There were only a handful of chocolate manufacturers that I could purchase from, and I was not impressed by any of them. 

Poppy:

What did you do then?

Veronica:

I did some research and found that I could buy cacao directly from farms in Ghana. So, I started making trips to Ghana, searching above and beyond for farmers who were interested in producing high-quality cacao beans. The farms I partner with now are great at organic farming. That is, farming without using pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Their careful fermentation process brings out the natural flavors of cacao beans! 

Poppy:

Does this mean that you don’t have to deal with any middlemen?

Veronica:

Oh yes! We have a very short supply chain. We pay the farmers twice as much as the market price, and the beans are processed locally before being shipped to us. We have pretty much eliminated the extra costs when cacao traders and big manufacturers are involved.  .  

Poppy:

Is that why your chocolate is still reasonably priced?

Veronica:

That’s right. There are no other ingredients but sugar and cocoa butter. Hence the name, Bittersweet. When you eat our chocolate, you can actually taste the fruitiness of our cacao beans. Another thing that keeps the cost down is packaging. I went for the simplest and greenest packaging available. No fancy tin cans or silk ribbons for that matter.  

Poppy:

Well, Veronica. Thank you so much for telling us about Bittersweet. I hope more chocolate companies do what you do. Keep up the good work! 

Veronica:

You’re welcome. 

Is Child Labor in Your Chocolate?

Chocolate is a thriving business, and big companies make a lot of money selling it. The chocolate industry is worth a whopping 135 billion dollars, and it continues to grow. However, as these big companies continue to gain bigger market shares and higher profits, millions of cacao farmers bear the costs.

Chocolate is a thriving business, and big companies make a lot of money selling it. The chocolate industry is worth a whopping 135 billion dollars, and it continues to grow. However, as these big companies continue to gain bigger market shares and higher profits, millions of cacao farmers bear the costs––earning less and less each year, well below the international poverty line. 

Cacao doesn’t grow just anywhere. The trees need hot, humid climates. That’s one reason that nearly 70% cacao trees are grown in West African countries. However, most of the money is earned after the beans leave the farmers and only when they reach the Global North, where the beans are processed and made into chocolate as we know it.  

Back on the cacao farms, farmers and their workers scrape by with an average income of less than $1.25 a day. The disparity is shocking. Cacao farmers in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Ghana alone make 60% of the world’s cocoa but earn only 3-6% of its retail value. 

On this amount, they cannot afford the basic necessities. They have little food, water or shelter. They cannot afford to send their children to school and are often forced to send them to work on cacao farms for another source of income. They work to survive, and their families depend on it.  

Unfortunately, the industry takes advantage of the situation. Much of the cacao harvested for mass-produced chocolate from major companies is often done by young teens and children. In fact, as many as 1.56 million children are estimated to be working on cacao farms in West African countries.  

Cacao farming is a challenging labor-intensive process. The fruit is cut straight from the branch with a sharp blade. Then it is cracked open with a machete or a wooden mallet so that the cacao beans can be scooped out. Imagine a child doing such dangerous work! On top of that, they are exposed to chemicals daily. 

Even if conditions were safe, child labor exploits children. They can’t attend school, and they are subject to abuse, injury, malnutrition, and exhaustion as farm workers.  

We should never tolerate child labor so that the rest of the world can have cheap chocolate. But what can we do to hold the chocolate industry accountable? We can start by paying a little more for a bar of chocolate.