0:52
Two Dutch journalists investigated child slavery in cocoa farming, then staged a fake arrest to expose the crisis. Their ethical chocolate brand, Tony's Chocolonely, sold 20,000 bars in two days and now generates roughly $200 million annually.
Two Dutch journalists investigated child slavery in cocoa farming, then staged a fake arrest to expose the crisis. Their ethical chocolate brand, Tony's Chocolonely, sold 20,000 bars in two days and now generates roughly $200 million annually.
These two Dutch journalists, they're covering the chocolate industry. All the cocoa comes from West Africa, and that there's a lot of child slavery and child labor. They find that it's true. They decide to do a publicity stunt. He calls the police and he goes, I'm eating chocolate that was made with slave labor. What? You're eating chocolate, that's not a crime. He goes, knowing what I know, that this is the product of child labor and slave labor, that's actually illegal. Arrest me, boys. And so they lock him up, and that becomes this viral sort of news stunt that brings even more attention to this. Now prosecutors end up dismissing the case. They decide to go in and create their own ethically made chocolate brand, and they decide to call it Tony's Chocolonely. It's going to be very lonely to build a chocolate company that's actually trying to be like ethically sourced. And it becomes a hit. They sell 20,000 bars in 2 days because of the public like resonance with their story. And so like last year, I think they did $200 million in revenue, and they made this like a legit chocolate company
