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daily thoughts

This is what's on our mind today.
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July 03, 2009

on the future

Ever wondered what the future will look like? Well it's going to be domestic bliss by the look of it, with Japanese robots that lovingly make you a cup of fresh coffee.

And floor bound UFO things that eat up your split baguettes.

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Start to think about about selling your shares in Starbucks and Dyson now.

July 02, 2009

strange, but true

The Electric Brae is a gravity hill in Scotland where cars appear to be drawn uphill by mystery forces. Sounds strange? Have a watch of this.

June 30, 2009

all white now

Last Monday, we promised to update you on the whiteness of Andrew's new shoes after a week of him wearing them in.

Andrew  

Unfortunately, Andrew didn't come to work on Friday (he was off queuing for Wimbledon tickets with his dad from 4am or something) so that shoe update pleasure was denied.

For everyone who dutifully logged back in on Friday, eager for a peek at how said shoes were doing, here's how they're looking today.

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Not bad considering they've been subjected to grass stains, pigeon poo and falafel juice.

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freezie squeezie

It's hot outside so Eleanor had the genius idea of making home made ice pops.

Picture 001

Ladies and Gentlemen we proudly present the Frozen Squeezie.

Step one: Take Squeezie.

Step two: Put in freezer.

Step three: (this is the tricky part) Wait a little.

Step four: Enjoy - as demonstrated here by Ed G

Picture 002

Tasty.

The good news is it couldn't be easier to join in at home, especially as they're on a special £1 offer down at Tescos this very minute.

(the squeezies that is, not Ed G)

a musical odyssey

I went off to the D&AD new blood show last night for a bit of creative inspiration from the next generation of young creative go-getters. It was great to see some of the students working on self initiated briefs for innocent (unfortunately I didn't have a camera so can't share their work with you). But here is my own highlight of the show by the very talented Eleanor Stewart from Glasgow School of Art. Well worth a watch.


Ye-ha.

June 26, 2009

free smoothie today

If you buy this today (Friday 26th June 2009).

Header  

Go to this page.

IMG_0017 

And then follow the message here.

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You'll find a free coupon for one our smoothies, valid til Sunday (plus another 50p off voucher valid til next week).

Happy Friday indeed.

June 24, 2009

DIY watering can

Found this handy tip in my brother's magazine the other day for recycling old bottles to make your own watering can

Tip 

I didn't have an empty milk carton handy but it seems to work just as well with an empty smoothie bottle.

Just pierce a few holes in the lid

P1010133 

Fill with water and shake viorously over your plants (or hanging baskets that still need to be hung).

Diy 

Then place with the rest of your gardening gear for safekeeping

Gardening kit

Alternatively, you could just fill an empty bottle and pour the water straight on.

But then you'd lose that all important sprinkler effect/satisfaction of making your own gardening equipment.

the innocent portion-o-meter

The highly observant of you may have noticed a flat screen TV with a green apple and red pepper on it in the background of our AGM films.

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This is in fact our 'innnocent portion-o-meter' that shows how many individual portions of fruit and veg we have sold in a day at any one point in time. 

It was invented by our Dave from IT who's good with numbers and codes and things. Thanks Dave. And well done Britain, you've already enjoyed over a million fruit portions via our smoothies today and it's not even gone six o'clock yet.

P1010140
Dave and his portion-o-meter.

June 23, 2009

long distance nick

Do you live on the coast? Know any nice places to eat or a man who crafts fiddles or makes surfboards for a living?

Then Nick would like to know.

Only 3 months to go 

Nick is the chap responsible for most of the photos in howies' catalogues and for the next 3 months, he'll be cycling the 5000 mile or so bikeride clockwise round the coast of Britain.

As well as raising money for charity, he's also going to be making little films about the artisan types who live and work along the coast to post here.

Nick on bike 

So if you know of anywhere along the coast that has:

  • Nice places to stay (with or without tent

  • Interesting craftsmen who like a chat

  • Good cafes (with cake and strong coffee) 

  • Free hot showers/sofas to sleep on

Or if you fancy cycling a bit of the way with Nick (or just meeting him for a mid morning coffee break) simply post your comments below or contact Nick here.

He's going to be popping in to see at Fruit Towers in August (slight detour from the coast so he can catch Wilco) so we'll update you on his progress (and saddle sore) then.

casting our net far and wide

AGM_header

Agm_podcast

You might remember our AGM, we went on about it a bit a while ago. Well, along with adding all the video footage we filmed on the day to the AGM bit of our website we've just created a brand new iTunes AGM podcast for all of the videos to live. 

So if you fancy downloading the full 2009 Q&A session, any individual questions or an overview of the whole day (set to an uplifting beat) onto your brand new iPhone to watch on the bus in the morning, go hear.

making words and pictures

We're working on our next set of labels at the moment.

There's quite a lot of tea, toast and tabloids involved in the creative process (mainly by Ben W) not to mention copious post-it notes, bulldog clips and special pens, but slowly, we're getting there.

Yesterday our labels looked like this.

Creative mess

Today they look like this.

Neater

Tomorrow we might start colouring in.

June 22, 2009

monday's shoes

Are still quite white

White 

We'll let you know whether Andrew's new shoes are still as eye wateringly shiny on Friday

New 

June 16, 2009

tattoo'll do nicely

Ink. Skin. Needle. It's a pretty big (not to mention painful) commitment.

Maybe you've thought in the past about getting 'Mother' tattooed on your bicep. Or Wendy perhaps. No? Not even a little bit? Don't you just envy those rock stars with their gloriously ink laden bodies?

Well, one rockstar up in Scotland (by name of Martin) has gone and got his very own innocent tattoo.

Innocent tattoo

Here he is on tour with his standard rider.

Now that's what I call rock'n' roll.

(Thanks to Helen for sending us this pic in)

(Posted by Jay)

ferrero rocher off

Mid afternoon slump? Lagging behind with that logistics performance report? Family size falafel with extra pickles for lunch? In need of a solution?

Why not try and breaking a world record in nutty chocolate ball consumption.

Nutty ball  


The current world record to beat for the most Ferrero Rocher eaten in a minute is 7 (the chap off Britain's Got Talent only managed 4)

All you need for this record attempt is an ambassdaor size box of said chocolate, 6 willing volunteers and glasses of milk on hand.

Countcountcount

Firstly, make sure you have the correct number of knobbly chocolate balls infront of you.

And then for the next 60 seconds, employ one of the following methods:

The 'one-at-a-time' approach

Fraggle 

The 'cram-them-all-in-and-chew-like-the-wind' technique

Mav 

Or simply the 'gobble/inhale/get-them-down-you-any-way-you-can' method.

Ferrero 

Richard managed to polish off 8

Victory 

But unfortunately no one from the World Records Board was there to witness.

Noted for next time.

His excellency should be pleased though.

June 11, 2009

interesting fact for a thursday afternoon

Wombat poo is cube shaped.

Cubey

 Something to do with them not rolling off logs apparently.

Wombat

(The droppings that is. Not the wombats.)

June 09, 2009

camp comp

Our new summer veg pot hits the shelves this week and to celebrate its arrival, we're thought we'd have a little competition to help you dine al fresco by your tent this summer.

Summer

We've got 3 sets of camping stoves, pots, pans and a whole box of our new summery recipe to give away to the three best camping stories we get.

Camping

Post your entries below as a comment by Monday 15th June and let burnt-baked-bean-instant-noodle surprise be a thing of Brownie Camp past.

This competition is now closed. Well done to Adam, Natalie and Nia. Camping stoves on their way to you very soon. Meantime campers, remember to always pitch your tent on the leeward side of a west facing slope on Wednesdays.

June 05, 2009

mango time

Alphonso

Atha, Siobhan and Sustainability Jess have just come back from a mango sourcing trip to India and they brought some back for us all to try.

Mango

The mangoes we use in our smoothies are called Alphonso mangoes (after a chap called Alphonso De Albuquerque who used to buy loads of them whenever he was in Goa). We use them for their velvety texture, delicate aroma and extremely fragrant taste. You don't tend to find them in the supermarket that often as their skin is very delicate but you can occasionally find them in little shops. If you're lucky.

According to Siobhan, once you've tasted an Alphonso, you can never go back.

To other mangoes that is.

Not to work/your desk/that report you're meant to have finished yesterday.

Mango chat

June 04, 2009

coc up

Cropped cocnut    

We have a little apology to make about our new special guest smoothie

The mangoes are spot on, the lemongrass too, but there's been a small hitch with the coconuts.  They snuck past our proofreaders and lost an 'o' from where we can assure you was not a planned spot. This limited edition of this special guest is out there for two weeks only, when we hope that our coconut milk will return to pure innocence. 

Chuckle while you can.

pizza the action

Helen, Charlie H and Andy went to visit Andy's mum and dad in France recently and spotted the latest in hot food on-the-go technology: a pizza vending machine.

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Simply select your topping (bolognaise)

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Get Andy to pay

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Wait three minutes

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Remove pizza

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Try not to burn your fingers

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Carefully inspect for artisanal baking quality

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Split fairly

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And then bask in a dough filled, melty cheese haze.

DSCF2047 

Instant pizza satisfaction for €10 euros.

June 03, 2009

cake by post

Getthemwhileyoucan 

Di came along to our AGM the other week and after seeing how partial we all are to a bit of cake, she very kindly sent us some of her Suffolk rusks in the post.

Rusks

They taste lovely warmed up with some butter and some jam (according to Kat H).

Thanks, Di

June 02, 2009

a little film about our AGM

AGM_header

Jim (or Fit Jim as he is known to the ladies of Fruit Towers) has made an excellent little film all about our second AGM that we held a couple of weeks ago.

Cake, questions, a bike called Sherbert - it's all captured right here, in full technicolour video format, for your viewing pleasure. Please enjoy.

(Sadly there are no close ups of Jim. He's a professional/modest sort of chap like that)

may's rate and review winner (and an electric bath)

Book


OK it's now the second of June so we're a day late for all that pinch punch first of the month business. But here's May's winner of our rate and review prize, awarded to the person who leaves the most insightful and useful review on any of the things we make each month. 

This month it goes to Stephen from Sussex who suggested our new book would be great for the reading lists in business schools. We thought this was a great idea so have been getting in contact with lots of business schools to tell them all about our new book and what students can learn from electric baths (page 10).
Bath

on the way to work this morning

I saw

Moving 

A man watching another man move lots of orange bags

Photo-0033 

Someone drying their jeans at a bus stop

Photo-0109

An advert for burglars

Rugged 

And a new way to sell rugs/keep your BMW warm.

Maybe it's time to find a new cycle route to work.

June 01, 2009

we're back on the telly



We're back on the telly again tonight, with a new advert starring our smoothies. If you're watching Emmerdale, The Simpsons or Time Team this evening look out for us. We'll be the ones on the grass in the park. And if you can't wait that long, here's a sneak preview.

May 27, 2009

chilli king

Nature wins.

Again.

Back in March, seven green fingered hopefuls took on a packet of chilli seeds, a veg pot full o'compost and their own special chilli growing techniques to see who could grow the hottest chillis in the office (and help Anthony raise money for charity at the same time).

Worm juice, pulley systems and routine spotlight checks were all tried and tested. But in the end, Nature reigned supreme.

Grow now please

Mr. Ed did nothing to his plants except water them everyday and use pencils instead of canes to make sure they grew nice and straight.

His technique was so successful that some of his crop had to be rehomed in the garden as he couldn't get to his computer.

Chilli den

Ed, IT Sam and Aslam then all shared in the first of the chilli bounty. Just to prove they could.

Winner

And apparently it was the hottest thing Ed had ever eaten.

Chilli king

But then, being the Chilli King, he would say that.

And after instigating what can only be described as capsicum sabotage throughout Fruit Towers, Anthony completed his marathon in 4 hours 29 mins and raised £1550 for charity (despite having flu the week before).

Ant

What a chap. 

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Stephen C on a musical odyssey
ted at innocent on an innocent & investment Q&A
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2009
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