JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Grenada Chocolate Co founder dead at 47

by

20130623

The man re­spon­si­ble for the thriv­ing co­coa in­dus­try in Grena­da has died. The founder of Grena­da's first choco­late fac­to­ry, Mott Green, 47, was elec­tro­cut­ed on June 1, while re­pair­ing so­lar-pow­ered ma­chin­ery for cool­ing choco­late at his store­house on Bel­mont Es­tate in St Patrick, Grena­da.

Green es­tab­lished the Grena­da Choco­late Com­pa­ny with his busi­ness part­ners the late Doug Brown and Ed­mond Brown in 1999, with the slo­gan "Tree Bar"–in­dica­tive of its en­vi­ron­ment-con­scious ap­proach to pro­duc­tion.

Born David Lawrence Fried­man, Green, orig­i­nal­ly from New York, went to the is­land in 1987 as a teen with his fa­ther, Dr San­dor Fried­man, the di­rec­tor of med­ical ser­vices at Coney Is­land Hos­pi­tal, who taught on the is­land each win­ter.

The name Mott came from the way Grena­di­an pro­nounced his nick­name, Moth. His adopt­ed sur­name, Green, was re­flec­tive of his love for the en­vi­ron­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the New York Times, Green, who grew up on Stat­en Is­land, ac­quired a taste for co­coa, a lo­cal favourite among Grena­di­ans, while liv­ing on the is­land. He soon left the re­mote hut he built him­self in the jun­gle there, and took in­ter­est in the con­cerns of co­coa farm­ers and work­ers. To get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the agri­cul­ture of co­coa, Green with friend Doug Brown of Eu­gene, Ore­gon, stud­ied choco­late pro­duc­tion in San Fran­cis­co. While work­ing in Eu­gene, they re­stored old ma­chines from Eu­rope and built new ones them­selves. All their equip­ment was shipped to Grena­da in the late 1990s.

As a child Green al­ways found ways to be en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, like mak­ing go-karts us­ing lawn­mow­er en­gines. He was a uni­ver­si­ty dropout, who felt ac­cept­ing a de­gree would be con­tribut­ing to an "al­ready ex­ist­ing in­iq­ui­tous so­ci­ety." Green spent much of his 20s squat­ting with a com­mu­ni­ty of an­ar­chists in aban­doned homes in west Philadel­phia, where he "res­cued" food that restau­rants had planned to throw away and dis­trib­uted it to home­less peo­ple.

Per­haps that's why it was not sur­pris­ing that he de­fied the ad­verse cli­mat­ic con­di­tions in Grena­da, and set up a choco­late fac­to­ry us­ing so­lar en­er­gy to pro­duce rich dark choco­late bars of sin­gle ori­gin, made from Trini­tario co­coa. The Caribbean co­coa lat­er be­came the most en­vied by choco­late-mak­ers around the world.

The tiny op­er­a­tion sit­u­at­ed in the co­coa groves of Grena­da's rain­for­est,would even­tu­al­ly ex­port choco­late around the world with the help of sail­boats, bi­cy­cles and so­lar-pow­ered re­frig­er­a­tion.

The ide­al­ist worked with the lo­cal small farm­ers who were paid hand­some­ly ac­cord­ing to an­oth­er re­port in the UK Tele­graph. It said his 50 fac­to­ry work­ers earned the same wage as he did and at times even more. Green was al­so not­ed for this as it is of­ten ar­gued agri­cul­tur­al labour­ers re­ceive small wages and are not treat­ed hu­mane­ly. He lob­bied against the bad treat­ment of small co­coa farm­ers, es­pe­cial­ly against the ex­ploita­tion of child work­ers in Africa by buy­ers and ex­porters who sell co­coa to big choco­late com­pa­nies.

He fought these is­sues, the New York Times said, by deal­ing di­rect­ly with small grow­ers and by keep­ing the pro­cess­ing and pack­ag­ing of choco­late with­in Grena­da.

In a 2012 in­ter­view with a Dal­las-based mag­a­zine, D, Green was quot­ed as say­ing: "My pro­gres­sion was ac­tivist, love Grena­da, love co­coa, love ma­chines and tin­ker­ing, mak­ing choco­late, and do­ing it all with­out hurt­ing the land."

Green's choco­late-mak­ing rou­tine, ac­cord­ing to the New York Times, went some­thing like this: he dried co­coa beans in the sun; built, main­tained and pow­ered the ma­chin­ery to make choco­late; pack­aged the fin­ished prod­uct; and cob­bled to­geth­er an in­ter­na­tion­al net­work of dis­trib­u­tors, in­clud­ing vol­un­teer car­go cy­clists in the Nether­lands.

"With a week­ly out­put of less than 300 pounds, Grena­da Choco­late Com­pa­ny's choco­late, is some of the most ex­pen­sive choco­late in the world (a bar of Grena­da Dark, 71 per cent, costs close to six pounds) said the busi­ness­grena­da.com.

Though the com­pa­ny gained, recog­ni­tion from sev­er­al no­table or­gan­i­sa­tions for its con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my, in­clud­ing ac­co­lades from the State De­part­ment, which praised its out­stand­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion ef­forts and pro­mo­tion of or­gan­ic farm­ing.

In 2012, the com­pa­ny made its biggest ship­ping deal, de­liv­er­ing tens of thou­sands of choco­late bars to Eu­rope on a sail-pow­ered Dutch ship, the called Brig­an­tine Tres Hom­bres, op­er­at­ed by a com­pa­ny called Fair­trans­port.

A doc­u­men­tary film about the com­pa­ny, Noth­ing Like Choco­late, was re­leased last year. It was di­rect­ed by Kum-Kum Bhav­nani.

Now that "the choco­late man" is no more, his moth­er Dr Ju­dith Fried­man told the New York Times she and sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple in­volved with the com­pa­ny were meet­ing this month in Grena­da to dis­cuss fu­ture plans for the com­pa­ny.

Green saw some­thing, even when the peo­ple of the re­gion saw noth­ing

Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist and chef Ramin Ganeshram, who is of Trinida­di­an her­itage, told the T&T Guardian in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, she was sad­dened and up­set by Green's death. The au­thor of Sweet Hands: Is­land Cook­ing From T&T, said she nev­er met Green in per­son but had the priv­i­lege of in­ter­view­ing him over the phone for an ar­ti­cle on the co­coa in­dus­try, which she was writ­ing for Is­lands Mag­a­zine.

"If any­body knows how choco­late is made, a trop­i­cal cli­mate is not con­ducive and it is al­so not able to sail. But here you had this 'crazy Amer­i­can guy' go­ing against all the odds to pro­duce a great dark choco­late, through en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly means.

"He sim­ply took a bean that is de­vel­oped in T&T–the Trini­tario–and cre­at­ed a gourmet sin­gle-ori­gin choco­late in­dus­try," said Ganeshram.

"For this guy to have had no back­ground his­to­ry in agri­cul­ture, let alone co­coa cul­ti­va­tion, to come to Grena­da and cre­ate such a great prod­uct, it sim­ply meant he saw some­thing, even when the peo­ple of the re­gion saw noth­ing."

She said in ad­di­tion to be­ing the head of such a great com­pa­ny, he was al­so re­spon­si­ble for bring­ing at­ten­tion to the con­di­tion of the co­coa in­dus­try and co­coa labour­ers.

"The norm was not to treat agri­cul­tur­al/co­coa labour­ers well. We would not even be dis­cussing the is­sue of child labour in the co­coa in­dus­try in West Africa, had it not been for Green and the ex­pose on the way he treat­ed his work­ers," said Ganeshram.

She said Green al­so proved you could cre­ate an in­cred­i­bly high-end prod­uct with lit­tle tech­nol­o­gy and with­out hurt­ing the en­vi­ron­ment.

Ganeshram said she hoped the com­pa­ny did not die along with Green.

On a spe­cial edi­tion of BBC Ra­dio 4's The Food Pro­gramme which paid trib­ute to Green, Sarah Jane Stanes of the British Acad­e­my of Choco­late said: "You won't have to have heard of Mott Green or even tast­ed his choco­late to find this sto­ry fas­ci­nat­ing be­cause it will take us in­to lush co­coa plan­ta­tions and in­side fra­grant fer­men­ta­tion rooms, but most of all it's a life sto­ry that serves as a re­minder how amaz­ing, or some­times com­pli­cat­ed but most­ly de­li­cious an ob­ses­sion can be."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored