Each year, UCL Advances and UCL's Department of Management Science and Innovation organises a series of guest lectures from leading entrepreneurs and investors.
Entrepreneurship Guest Lecture: Richard Reed, Co-Founder, Innocent Drinks
Date: 14th October 2010
Richard Reed is the co-founder of Innocent drinks, the UK’s fastest growing food and drinks company and the no.1 smoothie brand in the UK. The business was started in May 1999 and has a turnover of over £100m, selling over 2 million smoothies a week.
Innocent drinks is not Richard Reed's first enterprise. In fact, Richard’s entrepreneurial career started earlier than most, when he began washing windows for his neighbours at the age of 8. Following a brief spell of selling Smurf stickers at junior school (until his teachers caught him), Richard retired from the coalface of self-employment, aged 12. However, a summer job picking up dog biscuits in a pet food factory soon reminded Richard of the joys of working for himself, and led him to set up a summer gardening business called Two Men Went to Mow, employing his school friends.
After graduating from Cambridge University and working in advertising for four years, Richard Reed and his two college friends Jon and Adam, decided to set up a lovely fresh fruit juice company. After six months of developing recipes in their kitchen, they boys wanted to test their drinks with a wider audience. To do so, they bought £500 of fruit, turned it into smoothies and sold them from a stall at a music festival. They put up a sign that said, ‘Should we give up our jobs to make these smoothies?’, and put out a big bin that said NO and one that said YES. Fortunately, at the end of the weekend, the YES bin was full so they went in the next day and resigned.
And now…
Adam, Jon and Richard are closer friends than ever, Innocent now employs over 250 people, and has it's little tasty drinks selling in over 10,000 outlets throughout the UK and Europe. As well as looking after Innocent, Richard has advised the government on matters of entrepreneurship, through round table discussions with Tony Blair and his seat on the Small Business Council.
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