Richard Reed

Speaker Richard Reed is the co-founder of Innocent Drinks, the famous UK drinks brand and number one smoothie brand in the country. Richard is a fabulous keynote speaker for events around business, leadership and CSR – corporate social responsibility.

The Innocent story began with a start-up attitude, a commitment to the cause and creative thinking. The company went from zero to £100 million in ten years. Today Innocent is owned 90% by the Coca-Cola Company.

After working in advertising for four years, Richard and his two college friends Jon and Adam had decided to set up a healthy fresh fruit juice company. Following six months of developing recipes in their kitchen they wanted to test their drinks with a wider audience. 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 so Innocent was born.

The brand grew thanks to quality product and quality creative marketing – Richard and pioneered ‘wackaging’ — quirky messages on packaging. In recent years Richard has presented BBC’s Be Your Own Boss and is the author of If I Could Tell You Just One Thing…Encounters with Remarkable People and Their Most Valuable Advice, donating the author’s profits from the book to five mentoring and social inclusion charities. He was appointed a CBE for services to business and charity.

Richard Reed is a great business speaker, entertaining and informative with insights into start-up, exit strategies, branding and marketing.

Contact Richard Reed via a Specialist Speakers agent on +44 [0]1455 633289 or for speaking and presentation in both in-person and virtual settings.