31st October 2006
So it's a bit early for Christmas. But never too early to secure a free present. Never ever. Get yours below.
The spirit of Christmas 
Christmas isn't all about getting presents. Yeah right. You want presents, we want presents and that man over there with the bushy eyebrows definitely wants a present. So we've hatched a plan. Yes, this year we're going to give you a Christmas present. A bit like last year.
Just click here (*this link was available only to all existing family members on 31st Oct 2006 only, if you would like to join our family and get a chance to win nice innocent stuff, be the first to be invited to our free events like Fruitstock and receive a Christmas present next year just click here) and tell us where to send it and our third-party fulfilment partner (aka Santa) will look after the rest. We've only got a limited amount and it's first come first served, so no dilly dallying.
Hat of the shriek 
Halloween, where the local kids wander the streets in search of sweets and chocolate or if you live near us, hard cash and mobile phones. So we thought it would be fitting to find some spooky hats of the week. Here they are pictured alongside an innocent pumpkin lovingly carved by one of our drinkers, Sulu Long, who also took the trouble to drive all the way from Hertfordshire to hand deliver everything. We're frightfully grateful.
The power of pink 
Last Friday, Fruit Towers became Pink Towers to support the Breast Cancer Campaign Wear it Pink campaign. We stocked our chiller with only our pinkest recipes, played Pink's album back to back and even had our Amsterdam office turn pink too. Jacob (pictured) won our Prettiest in Pink prize for this beautiful cerise ensemble, bagging himself a pair of size 5 pink ladies trainers. Lucky thing.
Shop of the week 
This week we've chosen the award winning Moluka Coffee. They were presented with the Heartbeat award from Stratford-upon-Avon district council for selling lots of healthy food and drink. Apparently it was partly due to the amount of our smoothies they sell. They sent us this nice photo of their manager, Ben, receiving the award from a smartly dressed local dignitary. Congratulations.
And finally...
Last week we went and tasted some tea.
A great picture of a comet, somewhere in space last week.
What happens if you throw an elephant into a black hole?
A car powered by air? Yes please.
Did we mention that we want to give you a Christmas present? (*this link was only available to those who were existing family members on 31st Oct, to join our family in preparation for next year just click here )
25th October 2006
Hello. This week we've been thinking about firemen and giant cartons, with a little fruit on the side. Normal stuff.
Twofer 
No prizes for ages and then two come along at once. After last week's
award another one popped up. This time it was for Best New Product of
the Year at the Marketing Week Effectiveness Awards. Our kids smoothies
were the victor so we were pretty chuffed. And seeing as so many people here worked really hard to make them happen, we don't mind wallowing in the glory for another five or six seconds...
There, we're done. Back to work.
Fatal hattraction 
Matt's trousers are big news. People on the blog are still discussing them and Matt has been receiving fanmail from secret admirers. In fact, one of his groupies decided to knit him a
tribute - these beautiful woolly hats for our Supergran project
that spell out his name. Perhaps you can knit him some new trousers next?
They weren't quite our favourite hats of the week though. That honour is
bestowed upon the Ladies of Riverside Court, Age Concern Neath Port
Talbot. Click here to meet Bunny,
Humpty Dumpty, Chick, Lady Bird and Strawberry.
Dirty rotten cheats 
Did you know that lots of vanilla essence isn't even derived from
vanilla? It's actually extracted from cloves. What a cheat. Thankfully,
the vanilla in our vanilla bean and honey thickies is
straight from the vanilla pod - we just scrape out the beans (the little
black specks in the drink) and mix them up with the yoghurt and honey.
Some other facts about vanilla:
1. The vanilla plant is a vine that grows on an existing tree or pole
2. We get our vanilla from Madagascar
3. Vanilla ice cream is almost as good as chocolate ice cream
And finally...
Close-up shots of a snowflake and a cat's tongue.
See the Space Shuttle take off from space.
Check out pandacam.
And say hello to the large seal.
PS Congratulations to Andrew D and Sophia K who won the guest passes to see Arrested Development.
18th October 2006
Some news weeks are quiet. Perhaps all we have to offer is a pair of funny trousers or some smart ideas for your Halloween outfit. But then there are weeks like this week. A bumper crop. Please enjoy.
Please say hello to our new superfoods smoothies. We've had a super smoothie range for a while, but we decided to spruce them up and add a special new recipe. And now they're all golden and beautiful. The new recipe is pomegranates, blueberries and acai; the latter being a super-healthy Brazilian berry. The theory behind our superfoods range is that somewhere out there, Mother Nature is providing us with super-healthy stuff that is dense in specific nutrients. So all we have to do is go and find these super fruits and squash them into a smoothie. Beats using artificial boosters and weird stuff. Read more about them here.
A new one for the kids 
But that's not all with the newness, because we have a new kids smoothie to share with you. The development process was pretty simple - kids told us that they loved strawberries, so now we have a recipe for them that contains strawberries. When we first got some kids to test it out they were a little surprised. Because they eat/drink so many synthetically strawberry flavoured things their perception of what 'strawberry' tastes like is a bit skewed. But luckily for us they seem to prefer the real thing.
The award with the unfeasibly long title 
Last week we triumphed at the IGD Food Industry Awards 2006, winning the Sir Ian MacLaurin Award for Supply Chain Excellence. This means that we're the best at working out how many drinks we need to make and getting them to the shops on time i.e. the toughest bit of running our company (apart from figuring out how the new franking machine works). So we'd like to bow and
scrape in front of our Operations team, who beat the likes of Unilever and Nestle in order to win. They're the best.
Hot music action  Arrested Development played at Fruitstock in August and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. They emailed us to ask us if we could tell you all about their forthcoming London shows, so here you go - they're playing at the Jazz Café in Camden on Monday and Tuesday 30th and 31st October. Get yourself along there. We’ve got a pair of guest passes for each night to give away – click here to win them.
And finally...
11th October 2006
Q) What do you get when you cross a sheep with a man who just got out of a sauna?
A) A woolly sweater. (Just made that one up. Feel free to laugh whenever you fancy.)
Knit's a miracle
Welcome to yet another strong knitting pun and another chance to see a strong contender in the search for this year's finest Supergran hat. This week's hats of the week can be seen right here and were knitted by the ladies from the 'RSVP Scotland Knitting programme Forth Valley'. The group consists of 150 members who have knitted 2000 woolly hats to date. So please say "Hello Mr Duck." And "Hello Mr Bear."
We've also started a Supergran flickr group, so if you fancy posting pictures of your hats, this is the place to do it.
Tart fruit, hot facts 
Lemons are endlessly fascinating. For instance, did you know that lemons are called li mung in China, after local people transliterated (is that the right word?) the fruit's name? Us neither. Here's some other stuff that lemons can do...
Prevent scurvy during long sea voyages
Garnish fish
Hurt your little brother if thrown at his head
Make smoothies taste good
The people's champions 
We've been waiting to talk about these fine ladies for a little while. They're special. You see, if you ever get in touch with us, you're most likely to end up speaking to one of them. They're our People's Champions - guardians of the banana phone and repliers to the sacred emails (the ones that you send us). We don't salute them enough, so we'd like to make it official - we love you. Without you, we'd have a call centre and Greensleeves as the hold music, and that would be slightly rubbish. Thanks.
(From left - Row, Tansy, Kate, Peta. Not pictured - Lucinda, who hates having her photo taken.)
Competition time  A couple of competitions to report back on. Firstly, the howies thing - Stephen Hill and Alice McMillan both win £250 worth of howies clothes each. Lucky things.
And in the kids' colouring in competition, Imogen got a whopping 58% of the vote, thanks to her smart picture of a tree. She now gets an innocent themed birthday party at her house, complete with big grassy van and everything. Woo hoo.
And finally...< /strong>
4th October 2006
October. Bringer of wind, rain and homeknit sweaters. Or if you're reading this in Cape Town, bringer of picnics, flip-flops and a light side salad. You lucky thing.
Walk, don't run
So, last week we took the innocent walking bus into London. Admittedly a few of us were sheepish. Would we look a bit daft chugging through Hammersmith inside such a contraption? Would people think we were uncool? The answer is probably yes and yes, but then we weren't really doing it to look cool. You see, whenever we go somewhere as a company, we're tempted to hire big coaches to take us off to our destination. But as we were off for a group visit to the pictures in the middle of London (we watched An Inconvenient Truth - go see) we figured we should walk and take the Tube. Saves on nasty fumes you see. Next up - we attempt to build our own flying machine, also operating on human energy. We'll get back to you when we've figured it out.
Who's the best at colouring in? 
A while ago we wrote a little book about our smoothies for kids which included a colouring-in competition. We had loads of great entries and have managed to whittle them down to a final five. And we'd like you to vote for your favourite. The winner gets a whole innocent-themed birthday party at theirs, complete with grassy vans, smoothies and perhaps even a visit from the walking bus if they're really lucky. Vote here and make a little person very happy.
Hatsolutely fabulous  Your Supergran hats are pouring in so it's probably about time we kicked-off our Hat of the Week feature. It’s only week 1 and we're already struggling to come up with hat-based puns so be warned, you could be in for a rough ride. This week we've gone all posh with Katie Hudson's black tie number - click here to have a closer look at the dapper little chap. We'd also like to thank everyone at Udston Primary School for all the hats they've sent in. Especially Mrs Willshire.
When I grow up I want to be... Who's your business role model? Tough call. Bill Gates made pots of money and is giving it away to good causes. That James Dyson invented a way of turning a vacuum cleaner into a half-decent wedding present. And Richard Branson has a nice beard. Well, somehow our very own Richard Reed managed to top all of these people in a recent survey by the NUS. Apparently 49% of the 'up and coming entrepreneurial young' said he was their number one. Who'd have thought it?
Bon mots 
Here's one of our new French labels. They're the first ones entirely in French, so we thought we'd show them off.
In other news...
| 
innocent foundation