Launched in 2016 by Julia Mikerova and Björn Becker, the Brussels-based ‘bean-to-bar’ chocolate brand MIKE&BECKY has always made transparency the cornerstone of its project, with a view to social and environmental sustainability throughout its supply chain.
Björn ‘Becky’ Becker could talk for hours about chocolate, the chocolate-making process or MIKE&BECKY, the brand he founded with his wife Julia ‘Mike’ Mikerova almost 10 years ago. But you’ll never hear him say he’s a chocolatier. We are ‘chocolate makers’,” he says. One of the things that makes us different is that, from the very beginning, we wanted to concentrate on making ‘single origin’ chocolate, whether it be bars or hot chocolate, but certainly not pralines and the like,” adds the German-born, 25-year Brussels resident. The hot chocolate is made in our tasting room in Uccle, where we have direct contact with our customers and the public in general. As for our bars, they are made in our workshop in Anderlecht and sold in our shop in Uccle as well as in various specialist shops in Brussels, Belgium, the United States and even China.
MIKE&BECKY produces about 6 tons of chocolate per year, from about 4 tons of cocoa beans, in three different ranges: ‘single origin’, ‘flavored’ (mango, hazelnut, etc.) and ‘special’ chocolates. Within this last range, we play a bit with the production process,” laughs Björn Becker. For example, we have a bar where the ingredients are ground less finely than usual, which gives the chocolate a different texture in the mouth than we’re used to. It’s also a bit of a dig at the Belgian industry, which prides itself on producing the finest chocolate, when in fact it’s all about the machines and not the so-called Belgian know-how.
Transparency as insurance
Another way in which MIKE&BECKY seeks to differentiate itself from traditional chocolatiers is through the transparency of its supply chain, a concept that the Brussels couple has placed at the heart of their chocolate project since its inception. For all the origins we work with, we put all the information we have about them on our packaging: addresses of the cooperatives, phone numbers, geolocation of the plantations, sustainability promises, and so on. What’s more, we’ve already met most of the cocoa farmers we work with in person, usually at chocolate fairs,” continues Becky.
But how can we be sure that what producers say or promise will actually happen in the field every day? “We have to trust them, even though that’s obviously the worst thing to do. In German we say: ‘Trust is good, control is better’. One way of applying this control is through certification by a third party such as Fairtrade, UTZ, etc. In my own experience, however, this is a system that no longer works. We want to change the paradigm, which is why we advocate total transparency instead. We make the system visible, visitable and verifiable. If a customer, a competitor, a journalist or anyone else doesn’t believe me when I say that my cocoa, for example, comes from the 100% women’s cooperative Qori Warmi in Peru, all they have to do is call, ask a few questions or even go and see for themselves. We don’t have the resources to personally verify everything on the ground, but we give the public the opportunity to do so. And if someone came to us with evidence that a cooperative was lying, we would immediately stop working with them, and their reputation in the bean-to-bar community would take a huge hit. It’s that pressure, that accountability, that keeps things in check.
We’re already going far beyond what the industry has to offer. Traceability is not transparency. Callebaut, Mondelez and other large corporations know very well where their cocoa comes from, but they will always do everything in their power to ensure that no one else really knows”.
“The Fairtrade system is no longer working”
Despite this distrust of the certification system, MIKE&BECKY doesn’t operate entirely outside it. “We are 100% certified organic,” explains Björn Becker. “When we started, we tried to work with producers who were organic but couldn’t afford to get certified. It broke our hearts, but we had to stop, mainly for logistical reasons. The problem is that if you use cocoa that isn’t certified organic, you have to keep the products very separate during the manufacturing process, at the risk of “contaminating” your entire production in the eyes of the certifier. But my dream would be to be able to do without this certification.
Why should someone who wants to work properly, without pesticides, have to undergo numerous inspections, show their white paws and pay for the logo as a bonus, while those who use pesticides are exempt from all this? When it comes to Fairtrade, however, MIKE&BECKY is crystal clear: working according to its principles is self-evident, but that doesn’t mean sourcing Fairtrade-labeled cocoa. “In our bean-to-bar chocolate community, nobody goes through Fairtrade. In my opinion, the system is broken, so we’re not interested. The cheapest price we ever paid for a kilo of cocoa was 5 euros, well above the Fairtrade price. It was a great system 30 years ago, it was a game changer, but it doesn’t work in the 21st century.”
Transparent importers too
So how can Björn Becker be sure that all the cocoa farmers he buys from comply with the Living Income Principle? “I’d never presume to say, but I’m confident that they do. I certainly believe in transparency and the good work of the people involved in our supply chain. And if I want to know for sure, I can check. What’s more, I trust my fellow chocolate makers who buy from the same intermediaries.
In fact, within our community, we’re talking about creating our own label that’s solely linked to supply chain transparency. The idea would be to put a QR code on the packaging, at an international level, that would link to a website that would provide information on the list of ingredients and allergens, as well as all the stages in the process: who the producers are, who the importer is, all the contact details, and so on. It’s a huge, long-term project, but above all it needs funding…”. In any case, the people involved in MIKE&BECKY’s supply chain are few and far between. “We have only one intermediary between us and the cooperative from which we buy our cocoa (sometimes two, if another cooperative is responsible for fermenting the beans, editor’s note): the importer. And we only work with three people: Katrien Delaet of Silva Cacao in Antwerp; Emily Stone of Uncommon Cacao, based in the US but with a warehouse in Amsterdam; and Albert Smith of Crafting Markets, also in Amsterdam. All three know the social and environmental ins and outs of the plantations and publish highly transparent reports on their activities every year. Björn Becker is pleased to report that Uncommon Cacao goes so far as to systematically publish all of its contracts online, while the other two importers share them upon request.
“The chocolate industry is going to the wall”
Unfortunately, this transparency is the exception in a sector largely dominated by industrial producers. “In my opinion, the chocolate industry is locked into a logic that goes straight to the wall and does not really deviate from its path,” laments the co-founder of MIKE&BECKY. “The industry adds a lot of communication, marketing, fake innovations… But at the end of the day, it doesn’t change the fact that 99% of chocolate is produced in a catastrophic way, with all the negative effects you can imagine: deforestation, child labor, poverty, and so on. In Belgium, we tend to tell ourselves that it’s not our fault that we make the best chocolate in the world, when in fact it’s 100% our fault. We are one of the biggest producers in the world, we are responsible and we can’t hide. People tell me it’s unrealistic to solve these problems? My answer is that it will be realistic the day we finally put cocoa and chocolate in the premier league of quality products, alongside wine, cheese, coffee and so on.
All good things have a name, an address, a terroir. Even for the worst wines, you’ll never find “Red Wine, Origin: Europe’, but it’s accepted for chocolate. But that would require the industry to change its production methods, and change hurts. So the industry prefers to remain in denial. The most that’s being done at the moment is Beyond Chocolate, and this initiative keeps postponing the deadline for the Belgian chocolate sector to become sustainable. In my opinion, Beyond Chocolate is a disaster, a cover-up that takes the pressure off the system so that nothing happens. I complain about Beyond Chocolate and the labels because they hurt our community, the community of all those who work every day to keep this quasi-utopia alive. These initiatives give consumers a clear conscience, so they don’t understand why our prices are so much higher when we’re not talking about the same thing.
To remedy this, MIKE&BECKY is doing its best, on a small scale, to communicate as much as possible, even to “educate” consumers. “They need to know how and where the food they buy is produced, under what conditions, and so on. But people who can afford to pay 6 euros for a 60-gram bar of chocolate are in the minority. The global market share of bean-to-bar products is tiny, around 0.4%. Yet it is the fastest growing segment. But for things to really take off, there has to be a real willingness on the part of the political world to communicate about the issue and to confront the industry.
