Business school case study: Tony's Chocolonely's secret to tackling slavery
In the pursuit of ethical and sustainable production, one chocolate company has taken a bold and unconventional approach: sharing its secrets. Tony's Chocolonely, a Dutch company founded with the singular mission of eradicating slavery and child labor from the cocoa industry, has pioneered an "Open Chain" model that details its sourcing approach for competitors to follow.
While most corporate sustainability efforts focus on polished narratives and consumer-facing credentials, sharing supply chain practices is less common. Materials and procurement strategies are often viewed as proprietary assets, essential for brand and product differentiation. Tony's Chocolonely, however, is breaking this mold.
The company's mission is not centered on selling more chocolate bars, but on ending exploitation in the cocoa industry. Founded in 2005 by journalist Teun (Tony) van de Keuken, who had investigated such abuses, Tony's measures success through child labor rates, living income benchmarks, and co-operative capacity, rather than sales or margin-first focus.
Protecting intellectual property takes a back seat to scaling impact, a strategy adopted by other sustainable brands. For instance, footwear company Allbirds open-sourced its carbon footprinting tool and SweetFoam, its proprietary green foam made from sugarcane, allowing competitors to adopt low-emissions materials. Outdoor clothing company Patagonia has committed to organic cotton sourcing and established the Regenerative Organic Certified industry standard.
However, such an approach is still rare and raises questions about core business strategy. Can a company scale impact faster by giving away part of its "secret sauce"? How do companies balance the pressure to grow, differentiate, and deliver returns while pushing for industry-wide change? Is it realistic to expect larger companies to adopt the practices of their rivals?
Tony's Open Chain treats ethical sourcing not as a competitive edge but as a pre-competitive foundation for responsible business. Its framework is built around five core sourcing principles: traceable cocoa beans (mapped using GPS), a higher price (including Fairtrade and living income premiums), strong farmer co-operatives (supporting training, governance, and bulk purchasing), long-term relationships (minimum five-year sourcing commitments), and improved quality and productivity (to boost yields and incomes).
The Open Chain platform includes contract templates, the BeanTracker tool, and data-sharing protocols that allow all supply-chain actors to input and access real-time data on bean volumes, locations, and payments. This approach discloses prices paid above the average and tracks progress towards living incomes for farmers, designed to be scaled and adopted by other companies.
This model has attracted a growing coalition of food sector "Mission Allies," including Ben & Jerry's, Aldi, Pleese, Jokolade, and Holie Foods. In the 2023/24 season, 20 companies sourced over 17,000 tonnes of cocoa via the platform, a nearly 20% year-over-year increase. As of 2023, the company estimated Open Chain supplied 0.5% of the West African cocoa market.
Among Tony's longest-standing co-operative partners, the child labor rate is 3.9%, compared to an industry average of nearly 50%. Tony's pays Ghanaian farmers an extra $330 per tonne on top of the Fairtrade premium, closing the gap towards a living income. "We're not paying them crazy money... It's just a living income to get them out of poverty and stop using their kids on farms," Ben Greensmith, Tony's manager for the UK, Ireland, and the Nordics, told the FT in 2022.
However, the company is candid about its limitations. Former CEO Henk Jan Beltman said in 2018 that with thousands of farmers across remote areas, he cannot guarantee that every chocolate bar sold is 100% child-labor-free. The goal is to reduce harm structurally, not to pretend perfection.
Despite progress, broader challenges remain. The global cocoa market is under strain due to rising input costs, crop diseases, and climate volatility, decimating yields across Ghana and Ivory Coast. Whether the model is financially sustainable remains unanswered, as Tony's revenues grew 23% to €150 million in 2023, but it posted a €2.7 million loss due to higher premiums paid to cocoa farmers and continued investment in global expansion.
The question is not whether Tony's model is perfect, but whether it can shift how businesses think about their role. Across sectors plagued by extractive practices, from seafood and cotton to lithium and coffee, the idea of companies co-investing in open, pre-competitive infrastructure could be a blueprint for collective accountability.
What if, instead of guarding supply chains like trade secrets, companies shared the scaffolding that makes ethical sourcing viable at scale? Success would likely require a cultural shift: viewing transparency and collaboration not as risks but as levers for system change.
Can companies scale their impact faster by open-sourcing and giving away part of their advantage? Perhaps the better question is: in a world of climate instability, price shocks, and inequality, can they afford not to?
