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Really goes to show what economies of scale can do. Castronova chocolate appears to have 65 gram bars at a price of $12. That's only 5g/$.
Tony's Chocolonely, a commonly touted ethical chocolate company, sells 180 gram bars for $6. 30g/$. Half the price for triple the chocolate comparatively.
That said, there's not much to really compare. Castronova seems to be going after a different market with most of the bars being titled as their place of origin and composition, not what taste to expect. A smart move for a business with a smaller footprint.
The few bars I saw mentioning flavours were the lavender dark milk, lemon and lemon salt, and Fleur de sel - an apparently high end French sea salt. Quite different than Tony's milk honey almond nougat or white raspberry popping candy.
They won't be replacing our orders from Tony's, but Castronova has a 12 pack I think we'll get to see what they are like. Thanks for recommendation.
Toblerone: 45 g/$
Hershey bar: 70g/$
This is what theyre competing with.
I'm not entirely sure either Tony's Chocolonely or Castronova would see Toblerone or Hershey's as direct competition. Maybe Tony's would, given their lower price point. But if the main allure to a brand is the ethically sourced nature of the product, you've already lost most chocolate consumers.
At that point, you can afford to price higher as you're in a market where people that care more about the societal, humanitarian, ecological, etcetera impact than the impact on their own wallet.
If the goal is to actually change the chocolate industry, they're going to have to start caring about price. If a company's product is priced at 14 times the most common forms of chocolate, theyre not doing anything other than catering to the minority of people that are willing to pay that premium. The meat substitute industry has the same problem. Price things at what their niche is willing to pay rather than at a price that people that are more on the fence are willing to pay. So the result is that the cheap brands continue to fuck up the environment and exploit workers with little reason to do otherwise.
I see what you're getting at, but there will always be the higher and lower end of any type of product. Many companies charge orders of magnitude more for goods or services that most people get elsewhere for cheaper.
As with most any issue of a company damaging the environment or abusing their workforce, the answer could lie with stronger regulation, but that's getting a different subject altogether.
Except... these brands market themselves as environmentally friendly/fair trade. But in reality they're luxury brands. Which isn't compatible with that goal because luxury brands are niche products not products that actually cause real change. Something that actually causes change needs to be sufficiently widely adopted.
Thing is... I actually want things to improve. It matters to me that environmentally friendly products that dont exploit the people that make the materials used in them actually get popular enough to start forcing the industry to change. And while the law is a useful tool to acheive that change, it cant do it on its own. Peoples' buying habits need to be taken into account. You cant just... brute force everything.