With ingredients like chocolate, is there a commitment to fair trade?
We have not explored fair trade chocolate for specific reasons. We’ve spent a lot of time finding a cocoa that really tastes as close to chocolate ice cream as we can find. Consumers expect it to taste the same every single time. There are many kinds of cocoa powder from different parts of the world. And the best tasting powders are alkalized [made less acidic] through what’s called a Dutch chocolate process [treated with an alkalizing agent to modify its color and give it a more mild flavor]. If we use fair traded cocoa, we’ll have to buy it in huge quantities—way beyond what we need economically—and will probably end up with cocoa that is not similar to the blend that we’ve got, and doesn’t taste as good. I’m probably giving you a more involved answer than you want to hear, but there are economic and taste reasons why we haven’t done it. We don’t buy enough cocoa to justify that kind of a commitment. We are not that big of a company. Is there a commitment to GMO-free and organic ingr
