Nestle the Darker Side of Chocolate

We all know the Brand, most know their slogan, and even if you say you've never heard of them you've almost certainly had one of the products. With a company purpose of "enhancing the quality of life and contributing to a healthier future", and a value proposition of producing and delivering food products with superior nutritious and health value following closely behind that, how could you go wrong? I have to admit that I chose Nestle because I plan to use them as my case study and this was a good opportunity to dive into the research and post some preliminary findings. 

            As the world’s largest food and beverage company Nestle is a driving force in the industry. Through their “Open Innovation Platform” they are able to partner with new Food Production companies like Here Foods, Jackson’s Honest, and Miyoko’s, all of which are innovators in their respective markets that you can read more about here. Another hot topic in the world of Nestle, which I will touch on more in my case study, is the amount of waste generated by their bottled water industry alone. With tweets ranging from topics like this which I completely agree with because the days of "The Crying Indian are over", to ones like this about their plastic pollution in general it’s easy to have passed by the main concern I want to talk about in the blog.

SLAVERY FREE CHOCOLATE. . . Let that sink in for a moment. Do you know if that tasty Kit-Kat was made without cocoa harvest by child slave laborers? I guarantee you can't say yes because just as recently as February Nestle admitted to finding slavery in their supply chain and they are still in the midst's of a major lawsuit. After all of this you'd think Nestle would take a hard stance against the practice but in August they responded to the "Modern Slavery Bill 2018" in the Australian legislature by saying "it would add cost and time" that "will need to be borne somewhere." Sparking responses on Twitter like this

to Posts on Facebook like this

 All the while Nestle's Global Home Page continues to talk about the "good" they do for society.

               If I were their Brand Manager I would be working tirelessly to move the company, not just their brand image, away from any such practices and be diligently reassuring their customer base of any and all steps taken. Sadly the lesson that most people, including myself, take away from this is . . Slavery free chocolate is bittersweet when you're the largest food and beverage company in the world.