How One CEO Turned a Chocolate Company’s Crisis into a Mission for Industry Reform
Photos courtesy of Crabtree Brands
By QUINN PROPST
Ward Media Staff Reporter
When sexual harassment occurs in the workplace, companies often work to keep it quiet to protect their image and bottom line.
But when Peter Crabtree learned of sexual harassment in his chocolate company, L’Atelier TR (LTR), he made a bold decision: rather than handling the matter quietly, he chose to address it head-on, determined to make a meaningful impact and create change in his restaurants and the hospitality industry as a whole.
Crabtree chose to share this story because he was shocked. Shocked that trusted leaders could be so disrespectful to others, that those who speak up receive little support, and that harassers often face no consequences.
But the story is not about the offenders that caused so much pain and suffering. The story is about what to do next, he said.
Crabtree’s experience is not unique. Sexual harassment remains pervasive, particularly in the hospitality industry. Because of this, Crabtree and his team chose to dedicate the LTR brand to preventing sexual harassment. Each dedicated chocolate box features a sticker highlighting that a portion of its sales supports a nonprofit dedicated to ending sexual harassment through education and awareness.
Crabtree Brands is a food and beverage company dedicated to strengthening the community through its products. The brand includes the restaurant and retail businesses Crabtree Kitchen and Bar, ChocMo Chocolatier and Cafe, and High Spirits in Poulsbo and LTR on Bainbridge Island.
But its roots trace back to when a teenage Peter Crabtree discovered his passion for chocolate making in a high school culinary arts class.
“We made chocolates that afternoon as part of the course, and I was blown away by the ideas that I started having immediately on different cool things I could do to make chocolate interesting and fun,” he said.
In 2005, Crabtree and his mother, Colleen, launched a small chocolate business to help fund his college education. As they built the business they knew that they would always choose what is right over what is profitable.
After college and a career in software, he realized that it wasn’t the right fit and returned to the food industry to open ChocMo.
Over the years, the business grew, but COVID disrupted plans and created leadership gaps that proved difficult to fill.
In 2022, the Crabtree team was given the opportunity to purchase L’Atelier TR, a Bainbridge Island-based chocolate company. The original founders had sold the business earlier that year but remained on as employees. However, the new owner, recognizing that his expertise lay in coffee rather than chocolate, approached Crabtree with an offer to take over the company.
Crabtree knew the founders had a high level of skill in chocolate production and relevant experience. At the time, it seemed like the answer to the void in their leadership team.
So, Crabtree bought LTR, and its founders joined the leadership team at Crabtree Brands.
But a wake-up call came in January of 2024 when an employee suddenly quit on a Friday night. She did not give a reason but said “I don’t want any part of what’s going on. I’m leaving.”
Crabtree did not know what that meant but knew he could not let that go. So Crabtree and his team started asking questions. It turned out there were a lot of things going on that had been kept quiet.
As they began to investigate, Crabtree was horrified by what they discovered. Multiple employees came forward to share that they had been sexually harassed by the people who supervised their work.
“It was stuff that shook me to my core,” Crabtree said. “It was bad.”
In response, Crabtree immediately fired the founders and banned them from company property. However, he realized that simply removing the offenders was not enough.
Following the incident, Crabtree and his team reflected on what was missing in their organization and the industry at large. They kept coming back to one word: trust.
“It was such an erosion of trust when that happened,” he said. “And, the way that we can prevent more things from happening is to create a better sense of trust in our organization, so that when something, even something minor, happens, people feel confident that they can come forward and say, ‘Hey, this just happened. I feel uncomfortable. Can we have a conversation around it’,” he said.
“Rather than the norm, which is, apparently people don’t talk about it,” he said. “We pretend it didn’t happen. We, you know, we brush it under the rug.”
People often don’t speak up because they are worried about getting in trouble, he said.
After the incident, the Crabtree team workshopped a fresh start for the brand, redefining its purpose and identity.
L’Atelier, meaning “the workshop” in French, originally bore the initials of its founders. Now, TR stands for “TRust”.
Today, L’Atelier TR represents “The Workshop for Trust,” a brand dedicated to fostering open conversations about workplace behavior and the prevention of sexual assault and harassment in the industry.
Crabtree was determined to partner with an organization dedicated to preventing sexual harassment and violence. During discussions about how to respond, someone recommended Rebuilding Hope Sexual Assault Center.
“So I went to their website, and I read their annual reports and their different newsletters and was really, really excited about the focus that they had and the focus that they wanted to have around trainings and prevention and awareness, because that’s where we wanted to focus our efforts,” Crabtree said.
He reached out to Rebuilding Hope, an accredited sexual assault center serving Kitsap and Pierce counties, explaining that an incident had prompted his team to seek a partner for meaningful industry change.
The center’s executive director, Carlyn Sampson, responded immediately, and after several conversations, it became clear they shared the same vision. Together, they forged a partnership to align LTR’s mission with efforts to prevent sexual violence and foster a safer workplace culture.
During conversations with Sampson, the thing that kept coming up was Crabtree’s wish to change the culture and stop sexual harassment in the hospitality industry.
“We want to talk about it,” Crabtree told her. “We want to share this story. Because this is just not okay.”
Sampson told him that it was shocking to hear because most companies come to Rebuilding Hope and say, ‘make sure our company is protected,’ he said.
“I said, No, screw that I’ll burn the whole thing down before, I’ll let this (the company) be more important than that,” he said.
Crabtree told his employees the same thing when he learned they hadn’t wanted to say anything because they were fearful that it might be harmful to the company.
“I said, I don’t care about that,” he said. “If there’s stuff here that goes against our core values, that’s way more important than the financial bottom line of the company. That’s just the way that my family’s always done business and the way that we exist in the world, and that’s far more important than the bottom line.”
Through the collaboration, LTR launched an initiative to support Rebuilding Hope’s efforts. Each month, LTR selects a specific chocolate package, donating 15% of its sales to a fund dedicated to increasing awareness and education about sexual violence in the workplace.
The funds will be used for advertising Rebuilding Hope’s new presence in Kitsap County and its available resources and sharing industry stories to destigmatize survivors and spark prevention discussions.
They will also expand Rebuilding Hope’s donor network in Kitsap County and support the goal of funding a full-time Prevention Advocate for the area.
Crabtree has established several goals for the partnership in the coming year.
One is to offer the dedicated chocolates to other area restaurants to put on their menu. The second goal involves working with Rebuilding Hope to develop a training program for the participating restaurants.
“So they’ll have the opportunity then to talk about what this program is on their dessert menu, and how sexual harassment and sexual violence in the hospitality workplace in particular are something that needs to stop,” he said. “That will give them the opportunity to say, ‘hey, we’re over here, standing against this also and doing that in a fun way through chocolate’.”
“That’s what got me excited about chocolate to begin with, is the opportunity to use good taste and great flavors to create change and create some positivity,” he said. “That’s what our deliberate chocolate tagline is all about, and that’s for all of our chocolate pieces.”
The Crabtree team is working to integrate sexual harassment training into their everyday activities and are working to create a formal training.
“What we have done in particular is have lots of group and small group conversations around what kinds of behavior are okay and not okay,” he said. “And supervisors in particular, because that was the crux of a lot of this issue, is people that are in a supervisory capacity then exerting their influence on subordinates to get them to do things that are not okay.”
“One of the biggest things that we learned from this is how important it is to actually talk about an issue when it comes up.” Peter said.
Since then, Crabtree Brands has made sexual harassment training a priority, holding frequent group discussions about appropriate workplace behavior. Supervisors now receive strict guidelines about professional behavior.
Before the incident, Crabtree’s businesses did not have sexual harassment training They assumed that hiring good people would prevent misconduct.
“And the reality is that we ignored a potential issue because we didn’t think that it was relevant to us and our people here, because we were outside of what happens elsewhere,” he said. “And that’s apparently not the case.”
“I really hope that we can change the culture around what’s continued to be an issue in the hospitality industry,” Crabtree said.
For more information visit rebuildinghope.org and lateliertr.com.
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