toast anyone?

 

To cut down the toast queue, we have got a monster toaster installed in the kitchen

It is only on during peak toast times (8-9:30am and 3pm), is much more energy efficient than using lots of little ones and has provided much excitement all round

 

Especially when you might have ignored the instructions and put it through twice

 

 

Crumpets work fine though

Just waiting now to see who tries cheese-on-toast first

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.

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.

a little film about our AGM

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)

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. 

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.

egg in the clouds

Today we had a competition to see who could build the highest tower to hold an egg up. Using just two newspapers, a role of masking tape and a handful of plastic straws. It was of course an exercise to demonstrate the different ways in which people learn stuff (but you already guessed that right?).

Like all good competitions there were winners.

And losers.

Sorry to call you a loser Aslam, but you lost, it's no good hiding your face.

ten today

Here are those pictures from our tenth birthday lunch that we promised you earlier. The cake was a particular highlight.

We've grown one whole new row of tables since our eighth birthday lunch.

A truly magnificent example of a cake with a carrot on top.

Adam tells the story of that time Rich crashed a grassy van.

Ingredients for a good birthday lunch: flowers, humus, raffle tickets and our new book. In that order.

The cake gets distributed to a kind of orderly queue.

And no party would be complete without an official appearance from the innocent band.

today's the day

We're 10 years old today. Double figures.

More 10th birthday news later.