How Innocent Drinks Became a $500M Brand with Richard Reed

0:00We have a very simple mission. We're trying to help other entrepreneurs go faster. We love what entrepreneurship does for a country. It's where jobs are created. It's where opportunity is realized and we want to do what we can to help continue to make the UK the very best country in the world.

0:16Alex Chisnall:Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks and now Jam Jar Investments. So Richard shares how three friends with no exit strategy built one of the UK's most loved brands, sold it to Coca-Cola for over$500 million, and then turned their energy into backing the next generation of entrepreneurs. We had no exit, man. In fact, we didn't even know the frame exit strategy, which is what people talk about in the investment world. We were three guys that won the separate smoothie business. You know, we had a hope that it would be successful, but we had an assumption that it wouldn't. But we got started anyway, and we sold them to our local shop.

0:53And I think, to be honest, no one would more to provide than we were, really.

0:56Alex Chisnall:Welcome to this special bite-sized episode of Screw It, Just Do It from our back catalogue of over 550 past episodes. If you like what you hear, don't forget to follow the show and grab your free two-day pass to the Festival of Entrepreneurs this October. Just head to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk to claim yours and don't forget to dive into the back catalogue. Now open for this year's Festival of Entrepreneurs. Join us at the NEC in Birmingham on October the 8th and 9th for two game-changing days with 200 plus speakers and thousands of ambitious founders. Get your free limited two-day pass at festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk or click my personal link in the show notes.

1:33Alex Chisnall:yourself and co-founders um adam and john sold innocent drinks um brand coca-cola back in 2013 some 15 years since you launched um when you initially set up did you always envisage selling or was the offer just too good to turn down at the time well we had no exit man in fact we didn't even know the phrase exit strategy which is what people talk about in investment world we were three guys that wanted to separate a smoothie business and you know we had a hope that it would be successful but we had an assumption that it wouldn't but we got started anyway and we sold them to our local shops and then it's about a slight more throughout west london and then all of london and then england and then the united kingdom and it just grew and grew and grew um i think to be honest no one was more surprised than we were really coronation being the right products and was getting our timing right meant that it became much bigger much quicker than we ever would have thought so yeah but there was it wasn't some great master plan no carol had been trying to invest in the business from the second year of the business really wow okay i didn't know that okay they're callers they're literally every single year wow because i know speak to some people and they're literally setting up a business with the sole aim of building a brand and you know selling it in five, ten years, whatever that might be.

2:57Yeah. Well, I think it's whatever. Everyone's got their own motivations and got their own approaches. We were totally led by a sense of friendship, a sense of wanting to create a business that we could be proud of, both in a sense that it would be commercially successful, but also that it would be ethical and also be a vehicle which we did ride through life on, having fun and enjoying each other's company. We'd done many entrepreneurial things together at university and got a sense of how we enjoyed working together. We just figured our quality of life would be greater if we build a career working together rather than sort of going work in different companies.

3:40It really was a business that was born out of friendship rather than born out of a way to deliver an investor return or whatever.

3:48Alex Chisnall:And that's continued with Jamjar and that all three of you set that up together as well as two other people, I believe. Is that correct? Well, yeah, I mean, we left Innocent on the Friday and we opened Jam Jar on the Monday. Wow. And yeah, my desk is literally in between Adam and John's to the point where if I push back on my chair, when John pushed back in his chair, we'd jump into each other. So kind of physically close to the two guys, it's possible to be in a professional environment and Jam Jarwood is the merry band of seven now. And we have a very simple mission. We're trying to help other entrepreneurs both go faster.

4:28We love what entrepreneurship does for a country. It's where jobs are created. It's where opportunity is realized and we want to do what we can to help continue to make UK the very best country in the world to start up Google.

4:44Alex Chisnall:And did you think when you did exit that you'd achieved most of what you set out to achieve with Innocent? We got it to the level where it would benefit from having new leadership. We'd run it for 15 years. We'd gone from three guys with a market stall to a business that was the biggest brand in juice in the whole of Western Europe. The goal, for Innocent, is become the Earth's favorite healthy drinks company. and we're currently Europe's favourite healthy drinks company. So there's still a really big step to take. And we figured, you know what, we think, it's like 24 hours at Le Mans, you swap drivers to be able to keep the pace up, you know, stepping down and letting some new talent take it on.

5:36Alex Chisnall:And I have to say, since that's happened, the business has really flourished. If you're enjoying this conversation and thinking, I need to be around more people like this, then I've got the perfect solution for you. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is where 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 ambitious entrepreneurs come together to learn from the people who've actually done it. It's on October the 8th and 9th at the NEC in Birmingham, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes. Real entrepreneurs, real stories, real strategies, exactly like what you're hearing right now, but live and in person. Go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk and get your free two-day pass before they're gone.

6:14Three years on, Innocent is more culturally vibrant, donating more money to charity than ever before, making better products, nicer packaging. The culture and the vibe of the business is stronger than it's ever been. And that's a real testament to the success of the leadership team that are running it, but also the quality of the people that are in the business from top to bottom. and it's a huge source of pride actually when we get back, we still sit on the board as advisors and you can just sense the vibe is still alive. They coined a phrase, but they called it dudeism. We always called the logo the dude, that was our name for the little British way.

6:55And so there's this whole cultural dudeism which is about doing the right thing and doing it well and doing it, bringing people along and collaborating and sharing, but still being, you know, still working your socks off but having a sense of joy to it all as well and enjoying the people you work with and caring about the products and the fact that they're natural and ethically sourced and then providing the charity side and it all just wraps them into it's a very strongly positive altruistic ambitious culture so it's a really exciting place to be

7:28Alex Chisnall:and do you foresee yourself always um having a role there keep keeping a an interest there um I recently spoke to a lady called Barbara Cox who sold NutriChef, and she spoke at one of our Virgin Startup events, and she's literally crying saying that when it happened, when she sold the company, she felt like she'd lost one of her children. And some people really struggled to understand where she was coming from emotionally. But I think, again, every situation is different, and I wondered how you felt at the time. I felt fantastic, actually. felt deeply grateful the whole thing feels like a bit of a fairy tale because what's not to like we set up the business as three friends 15 years later we exited a closer friend we've ever been and then it ended how it started the people went down to pub and had a drink and we just talked about how great it had been and then got on with the next thing so yeah i don't miss it is i know i would miss it but i don't miss it because i'm doing something that's different but equally engaging but in a different way in my life philosophy has always been do what you love with people that you love and i continue to be doing that yeah but it's a tremendous source of pride and satisfaction and great memories and we we're here to serve our innocence pleasure to the extent that we can be helpful and useful we're going to be involved the point where if we ever start being annoying or irrelevant then we'll we'll fully move on but at the end of the day we're no longer the chief execs but forever you're the founders and the founders can still just have a small role to play we're sort of wheeled out whenever there's a big news or to go and see some of the key customers that kind of thing but it's like we found a patch of grass and we built upon it a house and lived in that house that 15 years but then we sold that house It's someone else's house now.

9:30And we'd still go past that house and we'd look at the house, great fondness and memory and pride. And occasionally we're invited into the house for a cup of tea and a chat. But it's someone else's house now. So what I'm really excited by, we made sure that we were really conscious of this at the time. It was never a founder-led business. It was a mission-led business. It was a business that lived and existed to serve the mission and principles of Innocent, which was for get as many healthy, and delicious and ethical natural drinks into as many people and places as possible, make it easy for people to do themselves some good.

10:06That was the mission then, it's the mission now, it would be the mission in the future.

10:11Alex Chisnall:That conversation just proves something. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So here's my challenge, upgrade your network. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is happening October the 8th and 9th, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes to get in the room with 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 entrepreneurs who are actually building something. This is where the risk takers, the game changers, and the people who've decided to screw it and just do it come for inspiration, education, and connection. Don't just listen to their success stories. Go meet the people living them. Grab your free pass now because the biggest risk isn't taking a chance.

10:46Alex Chisnall:It's missing the opportunity entirely. So some brilliant lessons there from Richard Reid. Again, this was a conversation I had pretty early on in this podcast, And I'd love to revisit their conversation with Richard after so many years now at Jam Jar Investments, investing in some super exciting businesses. So here are some of the takeaways that I'd love you to remember from this episode. So there was no master plan. Innocent was born out of friendship. It was born out of passion. It was not born out of an exit strategy. Mission led beats founder led. So their culture of dudeism, it still drives innocent today, right?

11:25Alex Chisnall:Success. So recipe being a third, right decisions, a third, timing and luck, and a third, blood, sweat and tears. You need all three. For investors, preparation matters. Jamjar backs founders who've done the work, not just written the words. If you enjoyed this bite-sized conversation, go check out the full episode with Richard Reid on Screw It, Just Do It. Don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss more wisdom like this.