Hey Grandma

The time has come. As of this week you should be able to pop into branches of EAT and take a look at our bottles wearing their funny little hats, all in the name of keeping people warm this winter. And to give our Supergran scheme a kick-start, we're having two in-store knitathons. Just nip down to EAT at the following times/places and be treated to the sight of some grannies doing some freestyle hardcore gnarly knitting from the streets. You can learn to knit or just get tips from some proper knitting experts And some of us will be there as well...

Wednesday 1 December 4-5pm - EAT, Lower Regent St, London
Thursday 2 December 4-5pm - EAT, Bull Ring Shopping Centre, Birmingham

Have a look at this week's top hats here.

It's payback time

We feel for you. We really do. Some of you have been receiving the innocent news for over four years now, and what have you got in return? A load of chat about smoothies, some pictures of flowers, a couple of special features about our fish tank and a photo of a squirrel. Some would argue that that is actually quite a good return on your investment, but we recognise that it's time to give you something tangible; a real reward for your faith in us. So here are details of how to get your innocent Christmas present.

It's quite simple really - just go here and fill in all of the boxes (the address being the important bit), then click 'OK'. The deal is this - we've got something nice that we want to post to you but we don't have your postal details (even if you've given them to us before, we're going to need them again). So by filling in the boxes, we'll be able to adequately instruct the postman. As usual, you can be sure that we won't pass on your details to anyone else, nor will we start to send you loads of rubbish, mainly because we aren't organised enough, but also because it would be a bit dumb. We should also say that only current subscribers who fill in their details will receive a shiny gift, so it's probably best not to send this to all of your mates and get them all excited for nothing.

Flowers of the week

We have been a bit slack on the Flowers of the Week front recently. Mainly because we don't seem to have any flowers around. But we do have some very nice fruit, so there's a special picture here if you fancy having a look.

Office mate revisited

Finally, Rowena asks you to keep sending in nominations for your Office Mate of the Week - you know, the bit where you nominate someone in your team/office/company who makes your working life a pleasure. Our email and internet went a bit wonky last week and Row fears she has lost some of your entries. Please send them to officemate@innocentdrinks.co.uk

La nouvelle vague

We are excited. And not just because it's sort of nearly Christmas. No, we are excited in a French way. You see, we start selling our drinks in a very swish and trés modern chain of cafés in Paris this week. They're called Bert's and you can check them out here. Jerome, who is the boss of all things innocent in France, says that they are one of the leaders in convenient and healthy food in France, that they are quite posh and trendy, and that he himself is a big fan of the Club aubergines confites, which is a type of sandwich. All hail Bert's.

Come together in uknitty *

Here is the final call to arms for you to knit small woolly hats to pop onto our bottles this winter. As you may well know, we have started a project called Supergran, along with our good friends at EAT which asks kind people to knit little hats for our bottles. We then sell the bottles, and 50p from each sale goes towards keeping the elderly warm this winter. More information is here and we'd love to get all of the hats in by the end of this week.

We also ask you to look at this picture of some lovely people knitting hats for us. They are from Hasbro, makers of such great toys such as design-your-own Monopoly (good Christmas present for your auntie) and K'Nex (great for hyperactive nephews). And they have made their meetings less boring by knitting hats. We salute them.

A job for your bad self

As usual there are many jobs to be had here at Fruit Towers. Indeed, at the moment there are six or seven of them up on the website. So we ask you from the bottom of our hearts - come and work with us. Check out http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/jobs and if you don't fancy it, let your friends know and then they can have all the fun (even if it is still a bit boring on Mondays like other places).

Of course, you might love your job. And you might love it because of the people who make your daily slog worthwhile. Yes, it's that time of the month when we ask you to nominate your Office Mate of the Month. The concept is simple - email us and tell us why someone in your team/office/company is super good; about how they make your working life a pleasure; about how they covered for you when you were asleep under your desk after a fairly heavy Tuesday night down at The Queen's Head doing the pub quiz. officemate@innocentdrinks.co.uk is the address you should send your entries to, and as ever, please don't send anything that's too heavy/weepy, because it'll only make Rowena cry and her glasses will get steamed up.

* Certain people are being reprimanded for this poor pun as you read these very words. It will be a long and painful punishment; the equivalent of 25 Chinese burns.

New for winter

It feels like winter, or at least it does here in Shepherds Bush. It's a bit cold today, and everyone is moaning a bit about how chilly they are, so it's the perfect day to launch our seasonal smoothie for Christmas. The recipe is winter fruits with festive spices (cinnamon and nutmeg in case you're interested). But the best thing about this smoothie is that you can drink it warm, a bit like mulled wine. Instructions and stuff are here, as is a nice picture of the drink itself, complete with Christmas tree label and woolly hat. And you should find it appearing on your shelves over the next week or so.

Showing off

It's the bit of our web news when we get to show off a bit, but it's all in a good cause. Last week we were very surprised to win the Employer of the Year gong at the National Business Awards. The judges were looking for "the organisation that can best demonstrate how, through well-adopted company values, the provision of stimulating and supportive workplaces and the active development of all employees, it has applied its human and supporting resources to achieve commercial success." And when they failed to find anyone who met these criteria, they chose us because they quite like our drinks. NB Please allow us to take this opportunity to tell all of the judges that we are joking. Sorry.

Being a bit serious, we'd like to say thanks to Bronte, Bronwyn, Camilla, Andrea and Conor who are the people that made us Employer of the Year. We love you guys, but only as friends.

Radio Razaul

Time to welcome yet another fresh face to the flock or fold or whatever it is. Razaul, or Raz as he prefers to be known, is going to be our Credit Controller. This basically means that he makes sure that we have money in the bank, which in the world of business is a fairly vital thing. Here are some facts that Raz would like to share with everyone:

• He was asked to play for England youth at football but wasn't that interested
• He would quite like to have a white tiger as a pet
• His mum makes nice curries but he'd prefer to eat a chicken jalfrezi from his local take away

Beast of burden

Last week's competition (in case you'd forgotten) asked you to send us a picture of a donkey. We received pictures of horses, sheep, dogs, monkeys, elephants, pigs and one of a llama doing something to a donkey. However, a few of you did know what a donkey was and did send us some donkey pictures. Please click here to have a look at them and to find out which one won. And if you really like donkeys you should check out http://www.thebrooke.org - a charity that helps poor old donkeys and horses who don't get to hang out in fields all day.

How do you like them apples?

Apples are pretty important to us. As well as looking good in our Thundercats lunchbox, they're also the basis for many of our smoothies, and by using apple juice we're able to make them taste naturally sweet, as well as supply you with lots of the vitamins and minerals that apples will give you. So we'd just like to share this fact with you - in the last year we've used the juice from 39,534,884 apples. That works out at about 1,700 tonnes of pressed apple juice, or the fruit from about 8,000 happy, productive apple trees. Ouch. What's more, if you placed all of our apples end to end, they'd reach from Fruit Towers here in sunny Shepherds Bush to the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt (a distance of about 2,000 miles). You can tell we've been busy today.

The New Style

Although neither Beethoven nor Buddha started work here this week, we're not too upset. Mainly because we got Jerome and Anthony instead. If you were going to compare them to historical figures, Anthony would probably be Montgomery, whilst Jerome would be Napoleon. This is because Anthony is English and is here to work in Operations, which is a bit like being in the Army and making sure that everyone is following orders and marching in a straight line. Meanwhile, Jerome is French and in charge of our new Paris office, which will be opening imminently (he's a bit taller than Napoleon though). So please say hello and bienvenue to the pair of them and join us in wishing them success.

You and the donkey

We get a lot of nice things from you. Cards, letters, sweets and a picture of a man with a donkey are the things that spring to mind. And we don't mind telling you that they make our day. But we thought we'd just share a couple of nice missives with you. The first one comes from Mike, who tells us the story of how the day he had his first innocent drink was the most memorable day in his life. Mainly because it was the day that he met a girl who he sounds quite keen on, even though he is "brash and uninteresting" and she is "arty and sensitive". Then we received mail from a man called Reto, who thanks us profusely for making "fantastic and uplifting juices", and then says thanks for many other things, not all of which are our doing. So we'd just like to say thanks back to you all. Without you, we would be a group of people sitting in the dark with a lot of unsold drinks, and the fact that you like them makes us happy every day. So, thanks.
And if you fancy winning lots of drinks, we need more pictures of donkeys. Send us a picture of a donkey to themule@innocentdrinks.co.uk - pictures should be under 100kb - and we'll reward the three best donkey pictures with their very own webpage next week (the senders will also receive drinks galore). Good luck.

And if you fancy winning lots of drinks, we need more pictures of donkeys. Send us a picture of a donkey to themule@innocentdrinks.co.uk - pictures should be under 100kb - and we'll reward the three best donkey pictures with their very own webpage next week (the senders will also receive drinks galore). Good luck.

Random patterns

Chaos is good. It's how the universe started, so you've sort of got to be a fan or else you'd still be waiting to be invented. Anyway, chaos is coursing through our veins today as we've just made Fruit Towers a bit bigger and most of our stuff is in boxes. You see, a few months ago we got hold of the building next door and started to do it up, and today is our first day sitting at our new desks. It's a bit strange but we're getting used to it. While we're on about the new bit of Fruit Towers we'd just like to doff our caps to Ian and Scott, the men who have done all of the hard graft. We pay tribute to them right here.

The Newbians

The fact that we've got a bit more space means that we've got room for the new people who started working here today:

Charlotte - Charlotte is our new Communications Manager, and already today she's fixed the phones and popped a couple of carrier pigeons into her filing cabinet. Apparently she tells us that being Communications Manager doesn't really mean that she should be fixing the phones, but we wouldn't know as we've never had a Communications Manager before.

Fiona - Fiona is here to do a year-long placement in our Trade Marketing department. She's pretty chirpy, but she's not a blackbird - she's a woman, and she's going to be helping Jess, Daisy, Simon and Michelle look after all of our customers and make sure that we look presentable in the shops. Bless her.

Knits so you

If we've got our demographic analysis right, you are an attractive woman aged between 16-30 who likes shopping at Topshop and knitting. Apologies to any unattractive old men who might be reading (sorry Dad), but who knows, you might be interested in this as well. This Thursday 28 October between 4-8pm we will be in Topshop on Oxford Ciqwrcus having a knit-in, where we'll be encouraging people to knit hats for our Supergran project. We'll be with the nice people from R2, a knitting 'collective' who will be teaching the basics of knitting (buy a sheep, shave off the wool, etc) and will be dishing out goodie bags as well. Should be some free smoothies knocking about if you're lucky. See you there.

Office mate

And finally, it's that time of the month again. We'd like you to nominate your Office Mate of the Month. All you have to do is email us a short description of why someone you work with deserves to have a lot of drinks and books and stuff sent to them. It's usually because they've been nice to you, bought you some fig rolls or even agreed to marry your ugly brother who to be quite frank was never going to leave home otherwise. All entries should go to officemate@innocentdrinks.co.uk by the end of Friday 29 October, and please, don't get too heavy or send any really sad stories as Rowena (who does the judging) is fragile enough as it is.