Innocent Drinks

Innocent Drinks was founded by three Cambridge University graduates: Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright, then working in consulting and advertising. The three were friends at St John's College, Cambridge. In 1998, after spending six months working on smoothie recipes and £500 on fruit, the trio sold their drinks from a stall at a music festival in London. People were asked to put their empty bottles in a YES or NO bin depending on whether they thought the trio should quit their jobs to make smoothies. At the end of the festival, the YES bin was full with only 3 in NO, so they went to their work the next day and resigned. After resignation, the trio struggled to find investment, but eventually had a lucky break when Maurice Pinto, a wealthy American businessman, decided to invest £250,000. In total, it took fifteen months from the initial idea to taking the product to market.

In 2007 McDonald's began a five-year trial of using Innocent smoothies as part of their Happy Meals. Feedback from customers led McDonald's to drop the product in 2012. However, in 2015, the Chiquita Smoothie was replaced by two varieties of Innocent smoothies in the Netherlands.

Revenue for the company declined in 2009 as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, which led to an overall loss of £8.6m.

On 6 April 2009, Innocent Drinks announced on its website an agreement to sell a stake of 10–20% to The Coca-Cola Company for £30 million, with the three founders continuing to retain operational control. As a result of the takeover, Ethical Consumer magazine reduced their ethical rating for the company from 12.5/20 to 6.5/20. In April 2010, Coca-Cola increased its stake in the company to 58% from 18 for about £65 million. In February 2013 Coca-Cola increased their stake to over 90%, leaving the three founders with a small minority holding.

In June 2016, the drinks company reported a sales surge thanks to new products such as coconut water and vegetable smoothies. These new products contributed £28m to sales. Revenues reported that year were £247.4m, a 13% increase on the previous 12 months.

Smoothies are Innocent's primary product. An Innocent smoothie consists of whole crushed fruit and juices, but other ingredients such as carrots and ginger have been used in some drinks. Innocent also produces juices for kids, not-from-concentrate juice range, Innocent Bubbles; which are carbonated, and coconut water.

Innocent launched its first food product in 2008 with the Veg Pots range, further extending the line to include a range of Asian Noodle pots in 2013, before exiting the food business completely in 2015.

Innocent launched a new range in March 2014. Super Smoothies consist of a blend of fruits, veg, botanicals and crushed flax seeds, with added vitamins.

In 2015 they launched a range of cold press fruit and veg juices.

Environmental record, advertising and controversies

Innocent Drinks discovered that one of their suppliers was contributing to the unsustainable water use threatening UNESCO World Heritage site Doñana National Park, one of Europe's most important wetlands.

In 2022, the Advertising Standards Authority banned an Innocent drinks ad that claimed the company's products have a positive environmental impact. The Authority found this was untrue, since the company's use of single-use plastics for its bottles meant that over their full life-cycle, they had a negative environmental impact. Bottles sold by Innocent contain 50% recycled plastic and 50% virgin plastic which has a higher carbon footprint compared to recycled; these figures exclude the bottle caps and labels.

From 2010 to 2012, Innocent worked in partner with its supplier and Unilever to map the water footprint and the efficiency of multiple strawberry farms over three years. The project permitted them to identify ways to reduce water use through improving water efficiency and management on strawberry farms.

Innocent Drinks next worked with the University of Cordoba to trial variations of short-pulse irrigation systems, which are considered to be the most efficient irrigation systems for strawberries while remaining cost-effective for farmers to install. In 2014, they began farmer workshops to train them in best practice water management and encourage them to reduce their water use. Innocent later developed Irri-Fresa, an app that calculates optimal daily irrigation times. In 2015, participating farmers using the app saved 1.7 billion liters – cutting water use by up to 40 percent on their farms.

In October 2007 Innocent was warned by the Advertising Standards Authority for making unsubstantiated claims about the health benefits of their "superfoods" smoothies, stating that their marketing claims could not be backed up by medical science and ordering Innocent not to repeat them.

In 2007 the European Union passed a new law, which took effect from 2009, requiring companies labelling their products as "superfoods" to justify statements that their products are "superfoods", "healthy" or "good for you". Currently Innocent still uses the word "superfruit" in their marketing.