What Would Willy Wonka Do?
Joe Whinney was an idealistic 25-year-old when he imported the first batch of organic cocoa beans into North America in 1994. Twelve years later, Whinney took his goals for sustainable chocolate further: He bought a former streetcar barn in Seattle and founded Theo Chocolate, which bills itself as "the only organic, Fair Trade, bean-to-bar chocolate factory in the United States." In 2009, in the midst of the recession, Theo launched a new chocolate bar line and achieved profitability for the first time. The bars are now sold in thousands of stores in all 50 states. Whinney talked to OnEarth about cocoa farming, the intersection of business and ideals, and why he doesn’t care if you eat less chocolate.
Are you obsessive about chocolate?
What I’m obsessive about is the whole experience, from the farm through to the finished product -- it’s such a beautiful thing. We think of chocolate as brown and sweet, and as this fungible commodity, and it’s really not. It’s sort of like wine. You can take a grape and make really cheap grape juice or you can make the most transcendent Bordeaux. Cocoa’s exactly the same way. The idea that it’s cheap candy that we gobble down is part of the problem that farmers are dealing with.
Tell me about your first encounter with cocoa beans.
I’d decided to do something meaningful with my life, so I volunteered for a small conservation organization in southern Belize, helping cocoa farmers. My job was to collect the pods. We’d crack them open and scoop the seeds out, and the seeds are covered in this pulp. The guys I was with were sucking on the seeds, so I tried it and it was delicious. I had no idea that this was where chocolate came from. I fell in love.
How did you end up importing organic cocoa into the United States?
In the early nineties, the organic food business was about $1 billion, total. I thought, "Oh my gosh, that’s huge -- everyone must want organic chocolate, and there’s no organic chocolate on the market." I wrote to all the chocolate makers in the U.S., and only one wrote back. They said they’d be happy to make organic chocolate for me -- if I brought them beans, sugar, milk, and customers.
What exactly does growing organic, Fair Trade cocoa entail? How is it different from mass-produced cocoa?
Cocoa is an understory crop in the rainforest, which means it does best with lots of bigger trees over it, providing a canopy and shade. So we encourage our producers to increase the biodiversity of their farms. Mass-produced cocoa is often grown in monocultures, which is not good for the environment and means that a farmer growing cocoa has no additional income. The average cocoa farmer earns less than a dollar a day, but we help our farmers improve the value and the quality of their growing operations, which means their children can go to school.
What is the core idea behind Theo?
A lot of what we focus on is quality. You’re buying a Theo chocolate bar because you like the way it tastes. It’s not like oats. We have to make good chocolate, and the only way to do that is to start with really good cocoa beans. So part of our mission is just increasing the value of chocolate. I’d much rather see people eat less chocolate and enjoy it more than eat high volumes of stuff that’s not very good and not very good for farmers.
Theo grew even at the height of the recession. How did you manage that?
Theo was only a couple years old when the recession hit. It was a little freaky. Here we were, a premium-priced bar, selling in a niche market, and large specialty retailers were losing market share. But we grew through that whole time. I think one of the reasons is because when people buy our product, they’re exercising their values. They’re not suddenly going to start buying something cheaper, because it raises questions of, "Who am I?" and "What am I willing to accept?"
You’re not a nonprofit, so you have to be concerned about growth and profitability. Doesn’t that force you to compromise your values?
Last quarter we were growing at about 50 percent. We believe that the more we’re able to grow, the more farmers can benefit. If we can have success based on ethical business practices, then maybe other companies can emulate what we do. And that growth has added value if I can take market share from a company that’s not doing such a great job.
You could certainly increase your profit margin if you bought cheaper beans. Is that ever a tempting choice?
When you are depleting your environment just to make a dollar today and are not invested in the soil or in biodiversity, you’re borrowing from tomorrow. If we swapped out our values for profit, I think we would lose consumers. It’s a bizarre concept to me that we even have this choice to go out and harm the planet and harm the people producing this raw material for us. For me that’s not even an option.
