Photo Credit: Wall Street JournalInteresting piece in the Wall Street Journal this week about the Nestle company using fair-trade chocolate in its U.K. KitKats starting in January 2010. Here's an excerpt from the article by Deborah Ball:
Swiss food giant Nestlé SA announced plans to use fair-trade chocolate in its KitKat bars in the U.K., as part of its continuing effort to polish its image as a socially responsible corporation.
The world's largest food manufacturer said Monday that starting in January it would begin using fair-trade chocolate to make KitKats in the U.K., where the chocolate biscuit was originally born. Under fair trade terms, farmers receive a guaranteed minimum price as well as extra support for social and environmentally friendly projects.
KitKat is the U.K.'s No. 2 chocolate candy after Cadbury PLC's Dairy Milk bar, and it represents about a quarter of Nestlé's candy sales in Britain. The U.K. is Nestlé's second-largest chocolate market after Brazil and is by far the biggest consumer of KitKats. The company didn't disclose the cost of the move to fair-trade chocolate, but it said that the price of the candy in the U.K. wouldn't change.
The article goes on the describe Nestle as a company in need of an image make-over, partially due to the "1970s-era scandal around its practice of selling baby formula to mothers in the developing world."
I'm not going to speculate on what's driving Nestle's decision - the Wall Street Journal does a great job of that on its own. But I am glad that Nestle's making a change, particularly one that has the potential to make me feel less guilty about the Halloween candy I hand out next year. Maybe there's hope for fair-trade KitKats in the U.S. as well?
We'd love to hear what you think of Nestle's strategy - why are they doing it, do the reasons matter, and should we care?
