This was back in , and supermarket chain Waitrose had agreed to trial the firm's drinks in 10 stores. Innocent was just months old at the time, and it was the first time it had got its smoothies onto the shelves of a national UK retailer. You might think it would have been a moment of celebration for the London-based start-up, but as co-founder Richard Reed explains, they were nervous.
But if they didn't sell well, it would be all over for us before it started," he says. So that is what we did. With the Waitrose trial a resounding success, it wasn't long before it was stocking Innocent's smoothies nationally, and within a few years all the other big UK supermarket groups soon followed suit. Yet while the three founders remain on the board, they don't actually own the business anymore.
Instead they sold up to US drinks giant Coca-Cola back in , as a result of the firm getting itself into difficultly during the global financial crisis. Richard, 45, helps us looks back on Innocent's meteoric rise. The three cofounders had been friends at Cambridge University, before all getting jobs in the corporate world. To start, there were three flavours of smoothies, made with whole crushed fruit and juice.
In , they launched a new product, Thickies, which had extra fruit. They also started sending weekly newsletters to subscribers and were commissioned by Waitrose supermarkets for a trial run selling smoothies in-store.
The trial was a success and setting up shop at trade shows assured Innocent of more sales. They launched their first Innocent smoothie recipe book and one year later, they opened a new office in Dublin. The launch of big smoothies in ml bottles and Juicy Water followed in As a result, they decided to launch their own registered charity, The Innocent Foundation, in To date, it has supported 67 different environmental projects.
The same year, Innocent opened its overseas offices in Amsterdam and Paris and its continued growth as a global brand began. New drinks have been introduced, including ingredients such as ginger and carrots. Richard Reed, one of three Cambridge University graduates who founded Innocent at the age of 26 in , denied they were selling out. We decided that we would be able to do a better job of that with Coke.
Reed said the relationship with Coke had been "beautiful" because the founders had been able to run the company but take advantage of Coke's marketing and buying power. We had gone out in with a plan to double the size of the company, to get the European business up and running in a robust and strong way. From loosing money in , it was then making money in when Coca-Cola upped its stake to 58 per cent.
Innocent Drinks began by touring music festivals around the UK. Reed explains that he knew the time was right to completely exit when he saw the kind of people he had assembled beneath him. So by stepping aside people can take a step up.
We already had a new office, our base, so something to occupy ourselves with. Reed and his partners had arrived at a junction many successful entrepreneurs find themselves at, do I try and build another business or go for something new. In the case of the Innocent boys it was firmly in the direction of something new. So, having taken a back seat at Innocent, Reed, Balon and Wright founded Jam Jar Investments to begin supporting the kind of businesses they had been 15 years before.
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