What Chocolate CEOs Said to Mr Beast That Changed Everything

Key Takeaways

What what's your like ambition? Right. So it's like Ben in 40 years is doing the pod on you. >> Don't ask me 40. Ask like 10. 40 is too far. You're gonna get me. >> Okay. What's like the >> What's the dream >> right now? I can't do 40 because like but but for the like next five the big thing I'm focused on which I was telling you guys about in the car is just feastables. Why people listen? >> What can you explain about your business empire? Can you >> Yeah. Well, specifically what chocolate might seem so random. Why is the largest YouTuber in the world selling chocolate? Well, right now 70% of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa, Kotavvar, and Ghana. And majority of the uh people who work on those farms are actually kids or child labor. So it's like 46% of labor. So I guess it's not majority. So I should correct this statement. 46% of labor is illegal child labor. Yeah. >> Oh, I'll eat this while you talk to >> Yeah. So um when I got into selling chocolate, I just learned about that and I talked to like exact big chocolate companies. I was like, "So what I hear like this child labor thing like is this just like we're just cool with this?" And they're like, "Well, it's just tell's always been and there's not really anything you can do about it." I'm like, >> "That's the way things have always been." >> I'm like, I literally I said to one, I think I don't remember the exact I'm a butcher, but I was like, Elon's putting like going to put people on Mars and you're telling me we can't not have little kids farming or chocolate. We can't just find people over the age of 18 or whatever. And they're like, "Well, it's not that simple." And I'm like, "What the fuck?" So, that kind of like pissed me off. And >> rule number eight. >> Yeah. send me down. I'm like, "Yeah, what you mean to say is that would hurt the billions of dollars in free cash flow you're spitting off in your margins." But anyways, um so I was like I went down that path like two years ago. I was like, "Okay, well I don't >> you actually went to West Africa." >> Oh yeah. But before even that, it's just like So then I was going to start referencing our piece of paper here. So then consultants are cheat codes. So I was like, "What is the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in the world? Who's the ones doing it right?" So have you heard of Tony Chocolone? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. So they're they're great. It's it's a European brand, but there like a reporter used to call out big chocolate and be like, "There's a lot of child labor. You guys aren't ethical." And like they would just ignore him. And so then he's like, "Fuck it." He started it, right? >> Yeah. And he started a chocolate company. Um and that's Tony's chocolate cuz like the lonely >> And it became like a $200 million business. >> It's doing pretty well. And um so I was like, "Let me get in contact with these people." And I just started talking to them. I flew him here to Greenville like the next week. And we were just like I was like, "Teach me everything about child labor, how we can remediate it. what should we be doing on our farms, etc. And like I just had like phone calls with them every single day, studied. And then the next five companies that are also doing ethical things, I just absorbed everything they're all doing into my brain. And I was like, "Cool. All right. I know what we need to do." Step one, like the main reason why there's child labor is just poverty. Like you like most of these farmers making a dollar or less a day. So like if you're getting paid a dollar, how can you hire someone that's over the age of 18 to work on your farm? So you end up just using kids because they're cheap or free. So, uh, step one is you you just have to pay them a living income. So, 100% of our farmers are paid a living income. So, I can go super deep. I'm gonna keep this mile high because I know not everyone is as passionate about the jobs industry as me, but this is what I live and breathe. But, uh, to so what is a living income, right? Because obviously a living income in America is completely different than West Africa. So there's a living income reference price where they look at the cost of like bread and living and inflation and it's like you know if a farmer sells you like a metric tons of cocoa they need to make this for them to be able to live roughly and be able to so we pay 100% of our farmer's living income reference price. So there could be an instance where you're a farmer you give us a shipping container of cocoa and you're like you know we want $1,100 and I'm like no you want $1,300 $1,300. Now make sure there's no kids on your farms. You know what I mean? Like uh or kids in illegal child labor. Um, and so that's uh I mean I'm oversimplifying everything. None of the this is a very complex thing and there's these we're talking about tens of thousands of farms. There's millions of farms there and this is not none of this is as simple as I'm portraying it but I'm just doing my best to generalize it all. So you pay your farmers living income. All our beans are fair trade certified and then we work with CLRS which is the child labor remediation system and then they routinely audit the farms, interview the parents, interview the kids, see if the kids are going to school, working on the farm etc. Uh and then if you know they identify cases of child labor following up and getting the kid out of child labor and stuff like that which all the and then we also just little things because it's since it's all a root of poverty the more money you help them make the easier it is for them to you know stop using little child labor on the farm. So we have coaches that will like represent 200 farms and they'll help them get more yield and like educate them on things they could be doing to grow more for trees or have more trees or we'll you know occasionally give them wheelbarrows or things like that so they can just I mean a little something as simple as a wheelbarrow. I mean it's a big difference between carrying 10 cacao pods theoretically again generalizing everything or be able to carry 40 in a wheelbarrow like that's technically makes you four times more efficient. Um it's no again making up numbers. Yeah. So my goal is just to make Fastables the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in the world. And you know, if we can do a billion dollars a year in chocolate sales ethically while being profitable, then I can use that as a model to, you know, on my videos talk about big chocolate and all the unethical things they're doing and just be like, look, it's possible to be profitable, to not do it at scale. There's no excuse besides they just don't care. And then, you know, we'll see what happens when I get to that point. [music]