Our Purpose, Mission, Vision, Values
Our Purpose - Chocolate Together
At Cococo, we are a team of talented people with shared purpose. We believe chocolate is most fully appreciated and best enjoyed when it is an experience shared between people. We believe chocolate is a food that requires all of us — consumers, industry, farmers, buyers, and sellers — to work collaboratively with the shared goal of improving cocoa sustainability across the supply chain. That’s chocolate together.
Through transparency in cocoa sourcing, choosing fair trade and sustainable supplies wherever possible, employing good manufacturing practices, using simple ingredients, and no artificial preservatives, and making the most delicious chocolate confections anywhere, we strive to achieve Chocolate Together every day.
We also believe in transparency in labeling and marketing practices. We are open about the ingredients and processing of our chocolate products. We strive to keep our labels, ingredient and marketing messages accurate and don't make claims that we cannot support.
Our Mission
At Cococo, we create high quality and innovative chocolate confections and foods, we invite others to explore a world of simple ingredients, delicious tastes, beautiful presentations, and special culinary experiences, and we work hard to deliver sustainability in our cocoa supply chain and in everything else that we do.
Our Vision
Cococo’s vision is to be the foremost sustainable chocolate confectionery where we believe in Chocolate Together; where artisan spirit, collaboration, and social activism meet; where sourcing counts; where the main point is to have fun; where people care deeply about quality chocolate and simple ingredients; where delicious taste overrules shelf-life-preserving sugar; and where we commit to the goal of less but better.
Less but better?
- Less but better means consuming in sustainable quantities, paying a reasonable and fair price for an uncommon indulgence, and in the bargain having the opportunity to truly savour the diversity of tastes that nature has to offer.
- Less but better means cocoa and chocolate should be bought and sold at fair trade prices. If the industry continues with its historical practices of buying and selling cocoa and chocolate too cheaply, then the cocoa economy won't work, and people and the environment will suffer.
- Less but better means that poor quality chocolate and fake sugary or waxy cocoa-based products should not remain the marketing and packaging norm because that sort of mass-market / food-industrialized approach tastes poor, is essentially dishonest, and is fundamentally unhealthy for people and the planet.
Values
Cococo’s three core values, embodied in its corporate name, are Cocoa, Community, Confections.
The etymology of the Cococo trademark is simple. The word Cococo is built from three other words, each of which has special meaning. Each helps define our products and core values:
Cocoa: Our chocolate is high-quality couverture and is currently made using Rainforest Alliance Certified™ cocoa and cocoa butter improving cocoa sustainability and fair trade practices across the supply chain.
Community: We support local and global communities through chocolate donations, collaborations, business partnerships, and sustainability initiatives, like our membership in the World Cocoa Foundation and our role as original signatory to the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI). We believe in accountability, transparency, and integrity.
Confections: We are a team of talented people retailing and handcrafting more than 80 delicious award-winning confections using simple local and organic ingredients but no sugary or artificial preservatives. Our chocolate is high-quality couverture, is sustainable, and is fair trade, made using Rainforest Alliance Certified™ cocoa and cocoa butter.
We make the most delicious and highest quality chocolate confections using sustainable, fair trade cocoa and cocoa butter for the betterment of the environment and local and global communities.
Supporting Women
At Cococo we value the strength, intelligence, resilience, and diversity of women, all year round, not just on International Women’s Day.
- In our business, we are proud to share that 84% of our total workforce is made up of those who identify as female, and 80% of Cococo’s upper management is female. According to Canadian Women’s Foundation, the Canadian average is less than 25%.
- In our local community, we focus our giving towards charities that specifically support children and women’s health and educational programs.
- In the global community, we affect change through cocoa sourcing. Our chocolate is fair trade and sustainable, made with Rainforest Alliance Certified™ cocoa and cocoa butter to support the farming communities of West Africa. Women cocoa farmers are central to the sustainability of the cocoa supply chain and cocoa-growing communities. More than 70% of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa (Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire). There are more than 2 million small cocoa farms in West Africa, many of them family owned. Women make up a large portion of cocoa labour and farmers in West Africa; women account for more than 50% of labour in cocoa production, and 25% of all West African cocoa farms are led by women.