Tony’s Chocolonely: the risks of being a woke brand

By Emma Irving

Why one brand of chocolate tastes better than another might not seem like a weighty issue, but it is – literally. Chocolate bars made by Tony’s Chocolonely, a Dutch company, weigh in at 180g: double that of a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bar of the same length and width. Chocolate as thick as your thumb might make your dentist wince, but it may be the secret to the success of this fast-growing brand.

Over the past decade experimental psychologists have been probing links between the weight, shape and feel of food products and their taste. In 2017 a team that included researchers from the University of Oxford asked participants to hold a box of chocolates in their hand for 30 seconds, then sample one of the chocolates inside. They had to repeat this with two other boxes. Although the chocolates were identical, the boxes weighed different amounts.

It turned out that the heavier the packaging, the more the participants liked the chocolate, describing the flavour as intense. They also said they’d pay more for it, associating heaviness with higher quality. With its chunky bars, is Tony’s Chocolonely signalling that its chocolate is nicer than other brands?

Ben Greensmith, who runs Tony’s UK operation, says the weight of the bars was “accidental”. The machinery available when the company was founded in 2005 only made bars that size. What isn’t accidental is the weightiness of the brand’s messaging. Tony’s was founded by Teun (Tony) van de Keuken, a Dutch journalist who investigated the chocolate industry and was appalled to discover how much it relied on slave and child labour.

Chocolate as thick as your thumb might make your dentist wince, but it may be the secret to the success of this fast-growing brand

The chocolate bars were conceived as a PR stunt to show it was possible to make “slave free” chocolate on a large scale, by paying farmers properly, professionalising farming co-operatives and making the supply chain transparent. Tony’s sold 13,000 bars in that first run, and van de Keuken spied a commercial opportunity.

The name “Chocolonely” – memorable if a bit of a mouthful – apparently refers to the loneliness of taking a stand against slavery. Some brands with such lofty aims plump for sombre packaging to convey their worthiness. Tony’s bars, by contrast, scream fun. With their bright colours, retro typography and uncoated-paper wrappers, they resemble the Wonka bars in the Hollywood adaptation of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.

Unlike the neat squares of other chocolate brands, Tony’s bars are pre-scored into uneven pieces that, according to the company, remind people of the “inequality in the chocolate industry”. A cynic might put forward another explanation: since it’s hard to break off a small chunk, you usually finish a bar faster than you plan to.

In the age of cancel culture, taking the moral high ground can be a risky move

Strangely for a successful chocolate company, Tony’s maintains that the product it sells is incidental to its mission. “We're not a chocolate company, we're an impact company that makes chocolate,” says Greensmith. If those priorities seem the wrong way round, then you’re probably not one of Tony’s target customers.

The chunky bars are aimed at the young and affluent, who expect firms to do more for society than simply pay their taxes. According to research by McKinsey, a consultancy, nine out of ten consumers born between 1995 and 2014 – known as Generation Z – reckon companies have a responsibility to address environmental and social issues.

But in the age of cancel culture, brands that take the moral high ground are playing a risky game. Last year Oatly, an oat-milk producer that bills its wares as a more sustainable alternative to dairy, was boycotted by some customers after part of the company was sold to Blackstone, a private-equity firm whose CEO and co-founder, Steve Schwarzman, had donated money to Republican politicians, including Donald Trump. A Twitter thread, also mentioning Oatly, alleged that another company Blackstone had a stake in was involved in deforestation in the Amazon. (Blackstone denies the allegations.)

Tony’s recently made the wrong sort of headlines, too, after Slave Free Chocolate, a pressure group, dropped it from its list of ethical producers. The beans used in Tony’s bars are processed by Barry Callebaut, a company that is being taken to court in America by representatives of eight former child-workers on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast. On its website, Barry Callebaut pledges to “eradicate child labour from our supply chain” by 2025.

Ayn Riggs, director of Slave Free Chocolate, thinks Tony’s ethical mission is merely a way to sell more bars. “To me it just smacks of using a bad situation to market your product – ‘buy me, I’m slave free’ – when in fact nothing is changing for these farmers in these countries,” she says. Tony’s says it has always been open about its relationship with Barry Callebaut and that the best way to reform an imperfect system is from within.

The recent threats of a boycott probably won’t hurt the business too much. Tony’s Chocolonely is the fastest-growing chocolate brand in Britain and its international market is expanding fast. Tony’s says it will “continue to work on raising awareness” about problems in the cocoa industry, perhaps realising that the woollier its stated aim, the less rigidly people can hold it to account. As Willy Wonka says, “So shines a good deed in a weary world.”■

Emma Irving is a freelance writer based in London

ILLUSTRATIONS: ALBANE SIMON