Advent calendars do not typically result in weeping children and furious parents. But Tony’s Chocolonely prompted such a reaction when it decided to leave an empty window where chocolate should be to highlight inequality.
Christmas is not just “an important season for chocolate sales” but an opportunity for “messaging”, says Douglas Lamont, the Dutch chocolate company’s chief executive who stuck with the controversial move, first made in 2021, when he arrived a year later.
The advent stunt — and the fact Lamont has talked at length about child exploitation and poverty — jars with his broader insistence that “the CEO is not a commentator”.
In a glass-walled meeting room in Tony’s Chocolonely’s quirky Amsterdam headquarters, decorated with the company’s bright-coloured branding, Lamont explains: “We’ve got a strong point of view on something really important: ending exploitation in cocoa, millions of farmers living in poverty . . . child labour. That’s a big societal issue.”
However, he adds: “I don’t have to have an opinion on every single political event going on around the world.” Off-limits for him are US politics, the Middle East and Ukraine.
It is a striking rebuttal of the post-pandemic trend for business executives to voice stronger views on political matters. Lamont believes the demand for commentator-CEOs is a response to workers worldwide, particularly the young, seeing their employers as “my family . . . my church . . . my community. And therefore, as CEO, [they] want you to have an opinion on everything . . . I absolutely think you should stay in your lane.”
Surely such so-called woke capitalism is in retreat following Donald Trump’s election as US president? Lamont says rhetoric may wax and wane but he hopes over the long term, business will be committed to social and environmental issues. “Otherwise, we’re really screwed.”
Lest this sounds preachy, Lamont promotes “capitalism as a cool way to solve problems”. The self-described “massive centrist” lacks the “patience” for politics — if he had a “magic wand”, he would cut the number of politicians and “pay the other half twice as much to get higher quality, less noise [and] move [at] a better pace.”
In business, getting stuck-in is vital, he says, absent-mindedly rolling up his shirt sleeves while talking about enjoying being around “doers”.
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Lamont is re-energised by his Willy Wonka role at Tony’s Chocolonely, which was started in 2005 by a former investigative journalist with the ambition to root out exploitation in the cocoa industry. The company “can be a $1bn brand”, he says, while “paying farmers a living income price and investing in our five sourcing principles [including tracing cocoa beans]”. This is fighting talk: last year’s revenues were up 23 per cent from 2022 to €150mn, but the company reported a loss of €2.7mn, reversing net profit of €70,000, as it paid more to cocoa farmers and invested more in expanding globally.
After almost 16 years at Innocent, the fruit juice and smoothie maker, including nine as CEO, Lamont was hankering for a challenge. “I’d done three cycles [of] strategy, and I didn’t have the drive and vision to go for another. I felt we’d achieved everything I wanted. At that point, you go, ‘OK, it’s time for someone else’. The team underneath me [was] ready. If I stayed, some of them would [have left].” He was attracted by Tony’s mission to “change a whole industry”.
The chocolate company’s main office in an Amsterdam harbour is reminiscent of Innocent’s Fruit Towers. The doorbell trills “Tony’s Chocolonely” in a faux operatic voice; red and white walls are decorated with bold chocolate bar designs and neon signs. In a corridor is an “idea shower”, where any employee can stick innovations scribbled on Post-it notes. Innocent’s “robust culture and 360 feedback”, he observes, was a good training ground for Dutch “directness”.
Lamont took the job on the condition he did not have to relocate his family. He is in Amsterdam every fortnight, staying in a hotel for two nights, otherwise working at home, in the London office, or another market.
“The leadership team spent a lot of time off-site building our own relationships and teams and getting to know each other so that when you’re online, it doesn’t feel like there’s a disconnect.”
Chocolate is abundant in the office, but there is only one coffee machine. “I’m a great believer in creating inefficiency inside a building because then it forces those random bumping [into] each other moments.” He ensures he has time to chat informally with junior staff to discover what is happening. “Otherwise you have [in person] meetings with the people you see every day online . . . and then you fly out.”
Staff appear very trim for a workplace with free chocolate. Lamont says they tend to give freebies to friends and family rather than guzzling chunks at their desks. How much does he eat? “Every day, I’ll have a little bit.” A bar? He looks shocked, estimating he will probably consume that in a week.
Obesity was also a challenge at Innocent, which was criticised for the high sugar content in its smoothies. “I’m not going to go back to that,” he prickles. Making a case for chocolate’s “mental health benefits”, Lamont is “very comfortable with the message about moderation”. Rather than buy more, more, more, the message is, “If you’re eating less of it, you can afford to pay the premium for the beans.”
Lamont takes issue with a characterisation of his stints after Edinburgh university, at KPMG and Freeserve, as dull compared with his later wackier companies and says he is grateful for the grounding in balance sheets, cash flow and profit and loss. “It amazes me how many people are very senior in businesses and have no understanding of how those three things interact.”
This focus on nuts and bolts applies to culture, too. Since taking over at Tony’s, he has tightened performance measures. “I said, ‘Right, [let’s] build process and structure as if we were a £350mn company. You grow into it.”
Once the systems are in place, he says you can say, “‘Let’s innovate. Let’s break the rules a little bit’. I came here and was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got enough rule breakers and entrepreneurs. We need them in a process. It’s terribly unsexy, but it’s really important.”
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One of Tony’s greatest challenges is volatile commodity prices. Poor harvests due to disease and weather and under-investment in farms have pushed cocoa prices to record highs this year. The company has committed to paying a premium to its farmers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, to enable a living income. It has absorbed most of the costs but did put up prices, explaining in social media posts it had “to protect what we paid to the farmer”.
Such ethical messages are targeted not just at consumers but also at competitors. Tony’s Open Chain business-to-business platform sells cocoa beans based on its ethical sourcing principles, which include supply chain transparency and improving the sustainability and productivity of farms. Waitrose and Ben & Jerry’s are among its customers.
Tony’s has received criticism. Two years ago, it discovered the number of children working in its supply chain had risen. Lamont says the company’s own reporting exposed the problem. “West Africa is a really complicated environment. If we get something wrong, let’s talk about [it], let’s diagnose [it].”
A report by Oxfam last year found that in Ghana “between 35 [and] 45 per cent of all cocoa farmers are estimated to live below the poverty line, and up to 90 per cent of farmers do not earn a living income.”
Lamont points the finger at some of the bigger producers. “I would love a moratorium [in] all these big companies . . . to be able to go, ‘Here’s all the shit’.”
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