How Manuko has become ‘more creative and resilient’ in the face of a global cocoa crisis

Running a business can sometimes feel like you’re facing a thousand headwinds at once. 

You’re managing a team, production, customers, supply, sales, and countless unforeseen problems. 

In the beginning, I really wondered how people did it. 

I have a friend who often says, “You don’t have to be crazy to run a business, but it certainly helps”. 

The number of problems we’ve faced as a business over the years (and continue to face) has been countless! 

We had a contract manufacturer who made all our products close down, leaving us without anyone to make our products for a period of time. 

We lost half our business overnight when a distributor dropped our products. 

We faced lockdowns for the better part of two years, where cafes and businesses we supplied either shut down completely or were severely limited. 

We’ve had shops we supply go bankrupt, burn down, or choose not to pay invoices. 

Recently, like all businesses, we’ve been facing unprecedented inflation and rising costs across all aspects of our business, coupled with high interest rates that are reducing people’s disposable income. 

Key production equipment has broken down. 

Our core ingredient, cacao, has almost tripled in price due to global supply shortages affected by adverse weather conditions and crop disease....