Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright met at St John's College, Cambridge. In 1998 they spent six months on recipes and £500 on fruit before taking a smoothie stall to a London music festival.
The stall asked visitors to put an empty bottle in a YES or NO bin on whether the three should quit their jobs. The YES bin was full, with just 3 bottles in NO, and the trio resigned the next day. Funding was hard to find until Maurice Pinto, a wealthy American businessman, invested £250,000.
Innocent launched in 1999 and started The Big Knit in 2003. In 2007 it recalled 100,000 bottles over fermentation and received an ASA ruling on superfood claims. It lost £8.6m in 2009, the year Coca-Cola bought a minority stake for £30m.
Coca-Cola raised its stake to 58% in April 2010 for about £65m and took over 90% in February 2013. Revenue reached £247.4m in 2016.