Q & A

Your roasting questions answered

Question

Dear Roast magazine,

With all of the latest news and trends regarding social responsibility, the differences between organic, all-natural, fair-trade and Rainforest Alliance certifications can be confusing. What impact do these certifications have on a company’s products? Also, how does the certification process influence the overall business strategy?

The Expert Answers

AS KERMIT THE FROG said, “It’s not easy being green.” And that is certainly the case when trying to create a product with environmental and socially responsible attributes. There are many different certifications; many overlap, and some conflict with others. Choosing which path to take can become far more complicated than originally imagined.
One way to illustrate the differences and the impact on a company’s product is through an experience I had in making an all-natural, single-origin, organic and fair-trade-certified product.
     In the chocolate world, a big trend is in single-origin products. Like coffee, this means all of the cacao beans come from a single geographic region, such as Peru, Santo Domingo, Ecuador or Venezuela. Just as coffees from different geographic areas have unique taste characteristics, so do cacao beans and chocolate products from which they are made. Because so much of our work is done with coffee companies, we wanted to explore the relationships between these single-origin chocolates and single-origin coffees to allow cafes to offer a distinctive mocha.
     One bedeviling issue is the difficulty of creating all-natural chocolate syrup. Although technically it can be done, syrups without preservatives simply do not keep for more than a few days and do not have a long shelf-life, so we have been forced to add the usual 0.1 percent of potassium sorbate as a preservative. However, I decided that these single-origin chocolate products would be offered as powder mixes, meaning they could be all-natural. As we sourced ingredients, we discovered that they possessed other appealing attributes. Some of the cocoa powders were organically farmed. Some had fair-trade certification. Some were certified by Rainforest Alliance. Knowing how important some of these certifications were to our customers, we set down the path of creating an all-natural, single-origin, organic and fair-trade-certified cocoa mix.
     The lab formulated a recipe, ordered samples of different single-origin cocoa powders and did a blind tasting. Immediately we discarded several based on taste. Comments like “dirty cardboard” and “rotting peat moss” accurately described some flavors, but did not bode well for accenting the perfect mocha. However, comments like “fruity, smoky and well-rounded” helped narrow the list to powders from Santo Domingo, Peru and Ghana. We contacted the manufacturers to get more detailed information about each one—and that is when we discovered the first problems.
     One of the suppliers was selling the powders as single-origin, but only 80 percent of the beans used were from the country of origin. The remaining 20 percent were from a neighboring country. That powder was rejected from further consideration, so we turned to another supplier with a powder from the same region and received assurance that it was indeed 100 percent single-origin.
     The next issue we faced was organic certification. Organic is a designation used in describing the growing and processing of a product. It does not connote quality, merely the fact that no artificial pesticides were used in the growing of the crop. Some of the powders were certified organic, so we continued working with those suppliers. Then we discovered another conflict.
     Fair-trade certification means that the growers of the product (coffee or cocoa) receive a higher price for their product than the traded commodity price. The belief is that farmers who earn higher prices for their crops translates to better living and working conditions on farms where subsistence agriculture is practiced. The conflict arose because TransFair, the organization that oversees the Fair Trade brand, only certifies crops coming from a cooperative venture. Single farmers cannot be designated as having a fair trade product, even though they might adhere to fair trade standards and receive a higher price for their products. In the case of Ghana, for example, the government of Ghana controls the cocoa crops by paying the farmers directly for their beans. Ninety-nine percent of growers in Ghana are small stakeholders farming two or three hectares of land, and there are no co-ops. Ultimately, we had to reject the fair trade designation for the Ghana powder.
     Next came the issue of all-natural. The recipe for the powder mix is basic—single-origin alkalized organic cocoa powder, organic sugar and organic vanilla. No artificial ingredients, and no preservatives. However, we couldn’t legally call it all natural because of the cocoa powder. Cocoa powders come in two kinds: natural and alkalized. Alkalized cocoa powder, sometimes called Dutch process, has an alkali added to the powder to mellow the flavor and taste. The alkali is also a natural ingredient, such as potassium carbonate. Every one of the mixes we created tasted better with the alkalized cocoa. It is widely used, and even more prevalent than its natural counterpart. Alkalized cocoa powder is sold and used in ingredients in thousands of retailers across the country, including stores like Whole Foods that pay close attention to every ingredient in every product they sell. However, the act of adding the alkali to the cocoa powder means it can no longer be considered all-natural under U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeling regulations. Although the ingredient statement of our single-origin mixes included three ingredients, and contained no artificial ingredients or preservatives, we couldn’t label it all-natural. The irony is that because the cocoa was farmed without artificial pesticides, we received organic certification for the item.
     Each time a conflict arose, we had to make sourcing changes. Organic powders weren’t fair-trade. Fair-trade powders weren’t organic. Alkalized cocoas weren’t all-natural. We kept switching powders to find the ones that tasted good and had the requisite certifications. The final label reads Single-Origin Cocoa Mixes. The origin countries are Peru and Santo Domingo, and both mixes are certified organic and fair-trade. I am glad we finally got them finished, and our customers are enjoying them. However, this process—working with a straightforward formula and trying to feature different certifications—was a far more involved and tortuous undertaking than I ever imagined. Kermit was right.

—Michael Szyliowicz

Michael Szyliowicz is CEO and chocolatier for Mont Blanc Gourmet in Denver. He has been in the specialty coffee industry for more than 20 years as a cafe owner and manufacturer. Relying on innovation to create new products and supply customers, his company has made the Inc. 500 list three times. Visit his blog at http://montblancgourmet.com/blog.