Tony's Chocolonely in Amsterdam implements access control system

Simple and accessible access management: no worries when employee tag is lost

Chocolate manufacturer Tony's Chocolonely is conquering the world. Not only with the tasty chocolate but certainly also with the underlying story; the fight against the exploitation of cocoa farmers around the world. The Dutch chocolate giant wants to set an example for the rest of the world. The organization is growing steadily; its headquarters are in Amsterdam, near the Westergasfabriek.

We visited there and spoke with the very inspired and passionate Office Manager Kisha Canwood of Tony's Chocolonely and Pascal Medik, Marketing Manager Belgium/Netherlands at Salto Systems BV.

The topic? Of course, the very tasty chocolate. And, the installation of the door locks. That too!

Kisha Kenwood and Pascal Medik.

Kisha says, "We have also been located in this current building on the Westergasfabriek grounds since January 2018. Currently, we are in three different connected locations. We have a total of 85 people working here. It feels like a real home base for everyone. We share the mission unconditionally. But apart from all the beautiful things we are doing, we also have to deal with the work processes of our employees and colleagues and a bit of logistics. Of course, we also consider safety on the shop floor and the associated access control important."

Intermediate doors

"For example, there are several connecting doors in our building for which we were looking for a solution. Because we have a fairly open structure - for example, customers can get into the staff canteen next door fairly easily through our store - it was important that we properly secure some essential access doors to other areas. Only employees with authorization are allowed in there. We finally decided to use Salto KS, purchase a modern access control system that operates entirely in the cloud, through Salto Systems."

"It works very simply," explains Pascal Medik. "The administrator of Salto KS is able to make any desired changes and blocks on any device equipped with the KS App or with an Internet connection and an Internet browser, as well as view the user history. Because management takes place entirely in the cloud, local software updates are a thing of the past."

All employees receive a tag that they can hang on their own keychain. Kisha manages all tags from the app. "Even if an employee unexpectedly decides he no longer wants to work for us and forgets to hand in his tag, we can simply block it. It could hardly be easier."

Advantages

Pascal explains the benefits of Salto KS. "You need - needless to say -  never having to replace cylinder locks again. If employees lose keys (tags), or if they are "stolen," it's just a matter of blocking the missing tag, exactly as Kisha experienced. And then you give the employee a new one. Moreover, you can control access management from any device. Whether from the desktop or cell phone; it's very user-friendly. Moreover, with Salto KS's one-time password technology, users can remotely open doors without a physical key. Last but not least, you can see in a track record who has opened a door. So you know who has been where. Notifications of access activity at doors and from users appear clearly in the dashboard."

Kisha enjoys working with it. "I haven't actually had any problems or questions since it was installed. It's very user-friendly. I can see that a lot more can be done with it by the way, but at the moment all the modules we have are more than sufficient for our premises at the Westergasterrein in Amsterdam. So a lot of worries have been taken out of our hands. And that's the way it should be: that way we can all stay well focused here on our core business: the fight against the exploitation of cocoa farmers around the world."

The story behind the creation and existence of Tony's Chocolonely

Currently, slaves work on cocoa plantations in West Africa. Many of them are children. This, of course, is not normal. Tony's Chocolonely's mission is to sell only 100% slave-free chocolate. However, it goes even further: Tony's Chocolonely wants all chocolate sold in the world - including that of other brands - to become completely slave-free. The Amsterdam-based organization wants to set an example for everyone in the chocolate industry. "We show that chocolate can be made differently: in taste, packaging and the way we treat cocoa farmers. On our own we make our chocolate slave-free, but together we make all chocolate 100% slave-free."

Not for nothing is the credo clear: Crazy About Chocolate, Serious About People.