Tony’s Open Chain - 2024 impact report review
If you want to learn about the detailed steps Tony’s Chocolonely is taking to eliminate exploitation in the cocoa supply chain then this is the report you need to read. I loved it and learnt so much!
Tony’s Open Chain is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tony’s Chocolonely, responsible for all the cocoa sourcing for Tony’s and their Mission Allies who buy traceable cocoa from them.
It’s really hard to boil this one down to just three things I like but here goes…
👍🏻 Three things I like:
1. POTENTIAL TO DELIVER HUGE IMPACT
They have a gorgeous integrated business model which has potential to deliver impact at a huge scale and change the whole industry.
Through collaborating with on-shelf competitors, Tony’s can be vastly more impactful than on their own.
This is true system change.
2. MULTI-LAYERED APPROACH TO ADDRESSING PROBLEM
They demonstrate a deep understanding of the problem they are addressing, and that they continue to research and learn.
This leads to a multi-layered approach to addressing child labour – at community, household and individual child levels. This is likely to be more successful in addressing a complex ingrained problem and shows they understand and are addressing various interconnected root causes / blockers / barriers – e.g. safe farming tools, making sure children have a birth certificate so they can enrol in school, startup kits for alternative income generation methods, providing convenient water sources at a community level, school kits, bicycles for children who live a long way from school.
3. LONG-TERM PARTNERSHIPS WITH COOPERATIVES
They build strong, long-term partnerships with local partner cooperatives.
The cooperatives manage the model on the ground (versus Tony’s going in and being paternalistic – big thumbs up) and are involved in shared problem solving and testing new ideas before scaling.
Long term partnerships also give both farmers and Tony’s more certainty and enable long-term planning.
❓Three questions it raises:
1. WHY A SEPARATE COMPANY?
I was curious to know why Tony’s Open Chain has been set up as a separate company to Tony’s. I wonder if knowing the reasons might influence the approach other businesses take to scaling their impact.
2. SCALE - WHAT TARGETS & ROADMAP?
What is their target in terms of scale? They talk about 80k metric tonnes of West African beans by 2027/28. What about beyond that?
What about the target number of Mission Allies?
What is their roadmap for achieving this scale?
3. WHAT ABOUT WHEN COCOA CAN’T BE GROWN?
Climate change impacts are factored into the work they are doing with farmers. But I wondered about what they are doing to prepare farmers and their own business for when large parts of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana are unsuitable for cocoa farming.
To what extent are they helping farmers diversify fully away from cocoa in the longer term?
To what extent are Tony’s Open Chain looking at how to meet cocoa demand from elsewhere?
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You can read the report for yourself here and let me know what you think.
If you’re preparing to write your own impact report, you might find my FREE Impact Reporting Roadmap helpful: