Cocoa Grader: Hard Job, Sweet Perks

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Cocoa Grader: Hard Job, Sweet Perks

July 11, 2012

BY LESLIE JOSEPHS

Just blocks from the New York Stock Exchange on a Monday morning in April, three men sat around a long rectangular table under florescent lights, dividing a pile of cocoa beans among themselves like they were poker chips.

The space is a crucial staging post in the $8 billion-plus global market for cocoa beans: the grading room of the IntercontinentalExchange, or ICE.

The men are among the elite ranks of ICE’s cocoa graders, who scrutinize shipments of cocoa beans—the key ingredient in chocolate—before they can be certified by one of the world’s largest agricultural commodity exchanges.

Although a small percentage ….”