Tony’s Chocolonely, founded in 2006, is a company that sells 100% slave free chocolate. Besides its regular flavours such as milk, dark and hazelnut, it also offers extraordinary flavours such as caramel sea salt, pecan coconut etc. The chocolate is sold worldwide.

What makes this organisation a social enterprise?

Right now, slaves are working on cocoa farms in West Africa. Many of them are children. Tony’s Chocolonely exists to change that. Number one priority is to eradicate slavery from the global chocolate industry. Its vision is 100% slave free chocolate.

Almost 11 years ago the Dutch investigative reporter Teun (Tony) van de Keuken launched an investigation about the use of slavery within the cacoa industry. He was literally shocked to discover that most of the chocolate on supermarket shelves was harvested by slaves – worse, by child slaves. He decided to do something about it.

He first approached some of the world’s largest chocolate makers, but they completely ignored him. So he decided to roll up his sleeves and do it himself. He ate a couple of chocolate bars and then turned himself in to the authorities as a chocolate criminal. By eating chocolate, he was complicit in slavery. But the public prosecutor wouldn’t prosecute him. Teun didn’t give up and went looking for witnesses; victims of chocolate consumption. He found 4 boys who had worked as slaves on a cocoa farm in Ivory Coast. They provided evidence against Teun and the 2,136 other chocolate consumers who in the meantime had joined Teun in his stride. On November 29th 2005, still awaiting the judge’s decision, Teun decided to lead by example and make 5,000 Fairtrade chocolate bars. Tony’s Chocolonely was born.

“If nobody wants to do it for us, why don’t we do it ourselves?”