At Tony's, founded in $2005$ to address some of these issues, achieving their sourcing goals and, indeed their company mission, has proven difficult. This LEAD assignment is about designing a plan for Tony's $($and any other chocolate company$)$ to achieve their goal of $100\%$ slave free chocolate. Your task is to create a $10-$year, three$-$phased plan. You may use any resources available to you and combining ideas from multiple sources is encourage $($be sure to cite your sources!!!$).$ Below are a few references for you to review, after reading the "Tony's Chocolonely: The Road to $100\%$ Slave$-$Free Chocolate" case $($in your coursepack$).$Traceability from Bean to Bar

In $2013$ Tony's achieved a fully traceable bean$-$to$-$bar process for the cocoa liquor in its chocolate

products $-$ it knows the origin, flow, and quantity of the beans. The beans are sourced from

cooperatives in Ivory Coast and Ghana. Barry Callebaut, one of the world's largest cocoa

processors, processes Tony's beans in a segregated stream and stores the semi$-$finished,

traceable, cocoa liquor in a separate tank. ${?}^{18}$

However, traceability claims in the industry are often valid for cocoa liquor only $-$ and most

chocolate products also contain cocoa butter, which is made from the same cocoa beans as the

cocoa liquor $-$ therefore entailing the same issues of poverty, labour malpractices and

deforestation. Without traceable cocoa butter, the traceability claim is only "half".

The Netherlands is a big market for white chocolate $-$ what does not contain any cocoa liquor, but

solely cocoa butter. Hence, Tony's chose not to sell white chocolate because of the difficulty to

claim bean$-$to$-$bar traceability for its cocoa butter, yet it was actively looking to do so$.$ For Frans

Pannekoek, Head of Operations at Tony's, "The challenge was to show the value of traceable

cocoa butter in order to get investment and support to effectively make it happen." In $2015,$ the

company had a breakthrough $-$ it made a traceable link for its cocoa butter$-$ allowing the

introduction of white chocolate bars.

This seemingly simple product achieved multiple objectives for the company. First, it delivered on

the mission; introducing traceable cocoa butter allowed them to substantially increase the volume

of ethically$-$sourced cocoa beans and include new cooperatives and farmers in its network.

Second, it increased commercial opportunities $($by entering a new market segment$)$ and

strengthened Tony's Chocolonely by differentiating it from other brands' "half$-$claims". Third, it

showed the industry the value of traceability and the economic feasibility of implementing such

projects