If you’ve ever seen a candy bar from Tony’s Chocolonely, you’ll remember two things: the bars are thick, so it’s difficult to eat one all on your own. And they’re impossible to break evenly, so they’re difficult to share.
“That’s on purpose,” says Suzy Dawood ’22, MS’23, who works for Tony’s as a data analyst. “The bar is unequally divided to represent the unequal division of profit in the cocoa industry. The people at the top get so much more than the cocoa farmers themselves.”
Tony’s is currently the fastest-growing chocolate bar brand in the premium and natural chocolate market. Right after graduation, Dawood went to work for the company, and she quickly found a home there. It appeals to her intellectually, as it engages with the skills she learned at the UW — “I like the technical aspects of the business,” she says, “and I like the creativity of consumer insights” — and it engages with her ethics. “Tony’s is a mission-based company, trying to end exploitation in cocoa, and so that really resonated with me.”
Badger Insider asked Dawood about her role in bringing fairness to the chocolate industry.
How long have you been with Tony’s Chocolonely?
I’ve been working here for about a year and eight months. I was brought in as a data analyst, and initially I was super heavy into forecasting products for the sales team, both products and financials. Then I did some sales strategy, market insights for new product development, [research on] competition. Now I’m transitioning into a revenue management role.
And how’s sales strategy going?
Over the past year, we’ve gotten a lot more distribution in conventional retail chains — Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Kroger.
Who’s in your market?
Well, we skew younger than some other brands, a little bit more Gen Z, maybe millennial. We also see it’s a little bit higher income.
How do you market to Gen Z?
Good question.
Does Tony’s look to you for Gen Z insight?
Well, I’m the youngest employee here, the “token Gen Z,” though there are a lot of younger people. Everyone at Tony’s gets a title, and mine is “DJ Pivot Table.” That’s why my official picture, my “mugshot,” has a DJ set.
What makes Tony’s different?
It’s how we source our cocoa — from our cooperatives in Ghana and Ivory Coast. But that’s not our main thing. Our main thing is called Tony’s Open Chain. It’s our mission to improve how people source cocoa.
How does that mission work?
Historically there’s been a lot of exploitation in the cocoa commodity industry. That includes child labor, forced labor, and not paying farmers a living wage. Tony’s works with our partner cooperatives to mitigate child labor and forced labor and to pay a living wage to these farmers. We try to mitigate deforestation to ensure that we can have healthy cocoa fields and harvest into the future. And we have five sourcing principles that we abide by.
What are those principles?
They’re to have traceable cocoa beans, strong farmers, a higher price, focus on the long-term, and then quality and productivity.
What does it mean to be mission first?
Well, Tony’s has a brand, but then there’s Tony’s Open Chain — it’s the system for how we source our beans. Anyone can join Tony’s Open Chain [TOC]. And at the end of the day, our ideal end goal would be all chocolate is sourced through TOC or sourced with those five sourcing principles.
