our friends in finland

Our friends at Helsinki Foodstock Oy now have their very own innocent grassy area in their office.

 

As well as the easy chairs, daisies and top of the range Scandinavian furniture, they also have their own bananaphone. 

You can call it anytime you like on +358 20 771 6565, to find out what the Finnish for boysenberry is or just to get the insider info as to whether there really are hippos living in them there Finnish forests.

(Posted by Mike)

now available in finland

Last month we started working with a company called Helsinki Foodstock Oy, who are helping us sell our smoothies in Finland. Here they are, looking fine and Finnish...

Things have started really well and you can find our drinks across Finland in Wayne's Coffee, Stockmann Food Hall, at the airport and in some very nice cafes throughout Helsinki.

Sami, co-founder of Foodstock, in a Wayne's Coffee shop

Getting around has been a bit tricky though. Even with snow chains attached to her tyres, our grassy van is no match for a filthy Finnish winter.

And some of our Finnish friends have been taking our drinks for a swim in the icy sea, for no apparent good reason.

To help us understand things better, and to share a bit of Finnishness with us, the Foodstock folks sent us over an ice hockey tabletop game. We played hard...

And then we had a fight, which we understand is how things are done, ice hockey style. We are slowly learning the ways of the Finn.

necking it in norway

Oslo, Norway.

The time is 3 o'clock in the afternoon and I'm on a short break away from Fruit Towers visiting friends.

It's a lot colder than it looks and approaching one of the many 7-Eleven's in the city, I am met with the unexpected sight of a particularly jovial Viking gathering.

Strangely enough, however, everybody has innocent smoothies in their hands. I wasn't expecting this. But perhaps I should have.

innocent launched in Norway just a few weeks ago and it seems our Nordic friends are very excited about it.

A speed drinking competition was quickly organised by a couple of roaming radio hosts.

Ready...

Get set...drink

Faster...

Nearly there...

This nice chap proved to be very talented at drinking very quickly.

From my limited grasp of the Norwegian language, the post-victory interview involved our shaded hero explaining how he had been training hard for the event.

innocent has well and truly landed in Norway, the Nordic folk have been waiting and they are taking their drinking very seriously indeed.

innocent hell's angels

Whilst recently driving one of our grassy vans through the streets of Gothenburg, our Daniel was pursued by a long haired chap on a motorbike, who then pulled over and started taking photos of the van.

Turns out Micke (pictured above) isn't actually an avid grassy van spotter but is president of the recently formed Innocent Motorcycle Club, who happen to be based in Gothenburg.

There are over 52 motorcycle clubs in the Gothenburg area and they all meet up regularly to cruise the Swedish streets, clad in the latest in leather leisurewear.

Back in Stockholm however, nobody in the office believed that Daniel had really met a group of Hell's Angels called Innocent.

And over at Innocent MC HQ, Micke also had trouble convincing his fellow bikers that there was a smoothie of the same name.

So here's proof that both do in fact exist.

 

Leather and smoothies, together at last.

You read it here first, people.

grassy flagship store

Tanja and Emilie from our Danish office spent a day last week, helping to grass up what has been dubbed our 'flagship' store in Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen's famous amusement park.

By covering the shop in grass and daisies, visitors should now be able find their way to nice healthy salads, sandwiches and smoothies much more easily than to popcorn and candyfloss.

Tivoli Gardens opened in 1843 and is apparently one of the world's oldest amusement parks. As well as a big posh gate and lots of beautiful gardens, Tivoli also houses the world's tallest carousel, something called The Demon and a wooden rollercoaster.

Just incase the prospect of a grass covered kiosk wasn't enticement enough for you.

eurovision

Hello, I'm Row and I'm one of the People's Champions here at innocent. I'm here to look after all of our drinkers, and be their voice inside Fruit Towers.  I recently went on a little journey to visit my European counterparts and here are some of the highlights, largely of the culinary variety, from my trip.

First stop was Amsterdam, where after a day imparting great wisdom and British colloquialisms, Ine and Jeroen took me out for a traditional Dutch meal.  I'm the sort of girl who gets nervous when the word 'surprise' is used around food, and even more so when it's followed by a vague description of 'meat mousse.'  Whatever that mousse was, it was good.

Ine, me, Jeroen and a strategically placed lampshade in The Blue Dutchman

Disaster struck, as the annual event of me losing my voice began.  My fears were compounded when my taxi driver choose the classical channel playing "The Funeral March" over Bruce Springsteen as I was about to leave.

extended vowels to reflect my northern accent

Next up was Hamburg, where I was off to see Brigitte.  After narrowly missing out on becoming a silhouette model (darn those clouds), she took me to Fillet of Soul, where no meat mousses were offered.  Instead, I decided to plump for elsässer flammkuchen mit speck, zwiebellauch, creme fraiche, rucola und balsamico.  No surprises there then.

In Copenhagen, the lovely Emile made sure I had copious amounts of warm drinks and chocolate, the two things a girl needs when she's feeling under the weather.

Naturally this wasn't just a feed-Row-up trip, I should stress that copious amounts of training and divulging of great knowledge went on.  If ever you pop into any of our European offices, the lovely Carlien, Brigitte and Emilie will make you feel very welcome, as they did me.  A big dank u, danke and tak to all of them for looking after me so well.

happy birthday scandinavia

Our Scandinavian brothers and sisters are a year old today. The innocent folks in Copenhagen celebrated by getting high on helium.

Happy birthday to you.

bike box peril

Our Copenhagen bike box is a thing of beauty. It's our main mode of transport in a city where the bike is king. We've already had one of the innocent founders in it (see here for early bike box action) and now one of the others has had a go. This time it was Rich, and he wisely chose to pedal, rather than ride in the box like Adam.

Riding in the box this time is Nicholai, who does all of the creative stuff (writing and design) in Scandinavia (he writes our Scandinavian blog too). He is asking Rich to turn right before he pedals into the person taking the photo, but Rich has got his eyes closed. This is not a good thing to do when piloting the bike box.

Luckily they missed the photographer, but Rich is now waving at the camera and not looking where he is going. The moral of the story - just because you started a smoothie company doesn't make you a pro bike box rider. You've got to earn your stripes. Starting now.

blogging in danish

Our Scandinavian blog has been in existence for a little while now, so we thought we'd point you towards it.

A good understanding of Danish will help you get more out of it, but for those of you who don't speak that language, there are plenty of nice pictures and video clips to check out.

a homemade innocent advert

Here's a little film that some Danish people made for us, as a sort of test advert. What do you reckon?