It began with a bin...

Two bins actually, marked ‘YES’ and ‘NO’. Our founders asked people at a music festival to vote with their empty bottles on whether they should give up their jobs to make smoothies... the rest, as they say, is history and the first innocent drinks were sold 21 years ago today.

The principles behind the business in those early days have served us well; make it easy for people to do themselves some good, build a business of which we can be proud and use our success to influence positive change in the business community. As I reflect on the past 21 years, I am proud of the scale and substance we have delivered so far but know there is much more to do. 

Becoming what we call ‘good all round’ and championing sustainable capitalism is what has inspired our employees past and present and it’s what motivates me. We want to make it easy for our drinkers to do themselves some good, with natural, delicious, healthy drinks. To date we have served up drinks with more than 11 billion portions of fruit and veg inside. We have worked hard to create a welcoming, inclusive and fun working environment for the many talented people we employ in our 20 offices around the world (or 550 virtual offices during the Covid-19 lockdown), making innocent a great purpose-led place in which to build your career. 

When it comes to looking after the planet, we try to lead by example: our pledge to be carbon neutral by 2030 and the current development of the world’s most sustainable blending and bottling site are just the latest in a long line of leading sustainability commitments. Finally, by being a successful, profitable business, we support those less fortunate than ourselves. We have given more than 10% of our profits to charity (over £15m and counting), with the majority through the innocent foundation to help the world’s hungry. Its ground-breaking work with its partners to counter severe acute malnutrition will help save hundreds of thousands of lives each year.

Sticking to principles over a long period of time is not always easy; we have adapted as we have grown and made lots of mistakes. Overall, I feel we have been true to the North star our purpose, vision and values provides. However, being good on our own is not enough.

Two years ago innocent became a certified B Corp business; a growing movement of companies using business as a force for good, committing to transparent and measurable social and environmental performance and the principle of balancing profit, people and the planet. By being part of a bigger community of like-minded organisations, we can shout louder about the change needed, learn from each other and, at personal level, I think it has made me a braver, more decisive leader.

The UN heralded the 2020’s as "the decade of action" to tackle the climate crisis and we will all need to step up in ways we hadn’t imagined to achieve a fairer and more sustainable future. We need more business leaders to set more balanced measures of business success.

Marking innocent’s 21st birthday in the midst of Covid-19 and significant individual, social and economic impacts has made me reflect further. In dark clouds there are often silver linings. At innocent, the impacts of Covid-19 have accelerated news ways of working and we are now looking at things through a different lens.

More widely, I hope it will encourage people to take a different view on how they live their lives and the choices they make. Governments, businesses and NGOs no longer have the excuse that it is too hard to make structural change. We have seen what can be achieved in a relatively short space of time when you really put your mind to it.   

While the world’s interconnectivity and fragility has become very apparent, governments and businesses have come together for common and greater good. As we come out of this, let’s also ruthlessly collaborate to tackle the economic and climate crisis in front of us.

So, thank you to innocent employees past and present and our incredible partners who have believed in us through thick and thin. Here’s to the future innocent, and our continued commitment to make our mark.