guardian angels

We have a group of 16 people at Fruit Towers collectively known as The Foundation Guardians.

This is them pictured below (well some of them)

Angelic, aren't they? Their day jobs span everything from IT to Marketing but they also spend some time looking after the various projects that the innocent foundation supports.

Every year, innocent gives 10% of it's profits to charity, most of which go to the innocent foundation. The Foundation then invests in rural development projects (run by NGOs) in countries where we source our fruit. We have 16 projects on the go at the moment and the Guardians all look after one of them, keeping in touch with the relevant project partners, reporting back to the business on progress, and generally keeping an eye out.

Every now and then, the Guardians all get together to update each other and last week, Catriona Fox (from Find Your Feet) and Peter Ryan (the CEO of the Microloan Foundation) came in to tell us all about microfinance. 

Mircofinance involves lending small amounts of money to people in rural communities to enable them to start small businesses and improve their own lives. It's the focus of a number of our projects so it was great to get a really indepth talk from two experts in the field.

They really know their stuff so it was good to be able to hear them describe their work and ask them lots of questions. Plus Sustainability Jess made cake. Which is always essential for a good meeting.

I'm afraid we ate all the cake, but if you are interested in watching the video that Peter showed us it's here...

Watch this space for more Guardian updates, coming very soon.

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.

 

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.

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

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.

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.

Dave and his portion-o-meter.

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.

Today they look like this.

Tomorrow we might start colouring in.

monday's shoes

Are still quite white

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

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

 

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

 

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

 

Richard managed to polish off 8

 

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

Noted for next time.

His excellency should be pleased though.

mango time

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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).

What a chap. 

specs appeal

About a month ago, we launched our innocent squeezies for kids. For those of you who haven't tried them yet, they're 100% pure fruit snacks, in a squeezy tube, especially for small people.

And we've made a little film about them right here:

We're also going to be doing quite a few samplings up and down the country on 30th May and have made some special postcards with pop-out glasses to explain just what a squeezie is.

If you're passing a Tescos next Saturday, keep your eyes peeled for a sampling going on and you might be able to bag yourself a few pairs of specs for the kids/the office.

 

They instantly make you look like you're working harder

 

Make cutting important deals on the phone much more fun

 

Help to solve complex IT issues

 

And are handy for the days you forget your monocle.

our new book

We've just written a new book all about innocent.

We say just. We've actually been talking about writing one for the last few years but it took us a bit longer than we anticipated (lots of looking for old photos, trying to remember everything that's happened and what not). 

Anyways, we finished it just after Christmas and it's now available in Waterstone's, Amazon and all the usual places.

In a nutshell, it's the story of our first ten years in business and is a book for anyone who wants to start their own business, bring fresh thinking to their current one or has been told their idea won't work. 

After all, innocent is a business that almost didn't happen (we were turned down by every bank in the land) so we hope by telling our story we can encourage other people to have a go at doing their own thing too.

Even if starting a business isn't on your to do list, the book does a neat job of summing up our first ten years. And there are lots of pictures. Very important. 

You can also watch this little film that the people from Waterstone's made when they came in for a look round.