Today is our juice carafe's first birthday. To celebrate we sang happy birthday, we played pass the parcel and Dave F's wife made this rather lovely orange sponge cake. Being an inanimate object our carafe wasn't able to enjoy the cake, so we did the decent thing and helped it out. It was delicious.
You may also remember that last week we set you the challenge of writing an ode to our juice carafe. We had some cracking entries but there could only be 3 winners, so a big well done to Lydia, Paulme and Becky whose tales of hullabaloo, marching bands and vodka made us smile a lot.
Its our juice carafe's first birthday, We are planning to have a great laugh, All our staff will be singing hip hip hip hooray, For the success of our posh jug, the carafe. The apples and oranges, all of our fruits, The staff, and Richard Reed too, Are going to strip down to their birthday suits, And cause quite a hullabaloo.
It's our juice carafe's first birthday A Juice of high repute Twelve months of loving labour Devoted to the fruit The finest natural product From Innocent to you Add a drop of Vodka And make it naughty too
It's our juice carafe's first birthday, Bring on the marching band, Bursting with fruit and here to stay, They're the zest-iest in the land. So let's dance for joy and celebrate, Gather round all your friends, 'Cos they're never made from concentrate, And there's even some exciting new blends.
Thanks to everyone who entered and congratulations to Lydia, Paulme and Becky. A case of our juice will be on its way to you shortly.
At a loss as to what to get your beloved this Valentine's Day? Need to atone for last year's diamond ring keyring stunt? Maybe we can help, as we've got 3 luxury Valentine's Day breakfast in bed hampers from Forman & Field to give away. Stuffed full of bubbles (of the drinking variety not the blowing kind), smoked salmon, coffee, jam, crispbreads and lots of innocent smoothies, we'll even arrange the hamper to be delivered straight to whoever it is you want to spoil.
To be in with a chance of winning, all you have to do is tell us about the worst romantic gift/gesture you've ever been on the receiving end of below by 9am on Monday February 13th. The 3 that we feel most sorry for will be rewarded with a delicious hamper and our deepest sympathies.
This competition is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered, and well done to Linda Guest, Stana Magnusova and Alison Blencowe who won the hampers.
Our lovely juice carafe's first birthday is coming up, and to celebrate we'd like to dedicate a nice poem to it.
Not being great poets ourselves (see below if you need further proof), we'd love you to have a go at coming up with a fitting tribute. It needs to start with the line "It’s our juice carafe’s first birthday", and it should follow the rhyming pattern ABABCDCD, so you might want to avoid sticking an orange at the end of a line. A little bit like the one below, but much, much better:
It’s our juice carafe’s first birthday, And we’re planning a bit of a do, We’ll probably play some reggae, And dance a little bit too. Someone will bake a big cake, Hopefully with jam and cream, Then we’ll all be too stuffed to stay awake, So we’ll fall asleep and dream.
Leave your poem as a comment to this post and the 3 we like most will each win a case of our finest juice. We'll be picking the winners on Thursday February 2nd so get your entries in by the end of the day on Wednesday.
This competition is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered and congratulations to Lydia, Paulme and Becky. A case of our juice will be on its way to you shortly.
Or should we say start, as for our first official bit of news for 2012, we are thrilled to announce that our new juice blends are now in the shops.
You can choose from our delicious apple and raspberry recipe or totally tasty tropical (sorry), depending on whether you need to be transported to a dappled orchard or a desert island.
You can find them in ASDA right now and in other shops very soon (we'll keep you posted as to where and when).
Given that at least one person you know will be on some sort of miserable cabbage maple syrup nothing beginning with C diet right now, why not cheer them up with a bit of sunshine in a carafe?
Or better still, give their eyes and ears a treat courtesy of a shady orange grove and the dulcet tones of Captain Jean Luc Picard.
Or even better still, if you fancy winning yourself a case of our new blends, just tell us your top 3 most ridiculous New Year's resolutions below and the 10 that make us laugh the most will each win a case of our new juice.
We'll pick the winners on Friday 20th January, so get your entries in.
This competition is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered. Congratulations to Katie B, Kieran W, Karen G, Thom B, Yasna, Andi G, Bex, Kerri W, Samantha S and Steven Y. A box 'o' blends winging their way to you very soon.
One of our drinkers, Ellen, made him from nothing more than an old smoothie carton, lashings of paint and a big helping of imagination. We like him very much.
This Sunday at 11pm, straight after his appearance on the final show of The Apprentice, our co-founder Rich Reed is going to be online for a live Q&A on our Facebook page. He'll answer as many questions as he can for 45mins so be sure to check in from 11pm if you'd like to pose a question, or recommend he wear something other than a blazer and T-shirt for a change. Should be good. www.facebook.com/innocent.drinks
Juice carafes come in rather handy for impromptu games of skittles (add water to make things a bit trickier), and the caps are the perfect spot for growing just enough cress to spruce up an egg sarnie.
It also turns out that our kids' smoothie boxes are just the thing for carrying sick ducklings to the vets
And as if that wasn't enough, they make pretty nifty conveyor belts for transporting snacks from one end to the other too.
Thanks to Matt, Laura, Dominic, Emily, Ian, Mrs Barry, Minnie's mum and Craig for the photos and suggestions.
If anyone thinks they can top these, we'd love to hear from you.
Sound the trumpets, hoist the flags, this is a momentous, err, moment. We're welcoming two new carton sizes to the family. We've been making our drinks in 1L cartons for more than 6 years now, and they have served us well. However, the time has come for our 1L cartons to enter retirement.
Whilst we’ll miss them, coming soon to a store near you* are our new 750ml and value 1.25L cartons.
750ml is a good size for those who've always struggled to finish our 1L cartons. 1.25L is a good size for those with many mouths to feed (or one very hungry mouth).
To our 1L cartons, we say thank you for the smoothie storing work you've done. We'll salute you as your cruise liner departs Poole for Antigua. To our 750ml & 1.25L cartons, we say a warm welcome to the family. We know you'll do us proud.
(We added this next bit as a comment below but we thought it was worth adding to the main blog too, in case anybody missed it).
In terms of pricing for our new cartons, we want to be absolutely transparent. Ultimately, it’s up to individual stores what they choose to charge for our drinks, but the RRP** for our new 750ml carton is £2.79, and for our 1.25L carton it is £3.69. This means our 750ml cartons are cheaper per pack, but cost a bit more per ml than our old 1L cartons. Our 1.25L cartons are a higher price per pack, but are the same price per ml as our 1L cartons.
Since we launched our 1L carton in 2004 we have not increased our prices. In that time lots of things have happened which mean it now costs more to make our drinks than it used to (namely, fruit prices have gone up, and we use quite a bit of fruit).
We know that some people will be disappointed by this change, but we hope you can understand that we felt that introducing two new carton sizes at two different prices was the best way to react to the fact that, put simply, fruit is more expensive these days.
* Different stores will launch on different dates from June – August, beginning with Sainsbury’s on 8th June
