Innocent Drinks cancels dairy-free smoothie range over disappointing sales
24th March 2023
Popular healthy drinks brand innocent will no longer be offering its vegan coconut, almond and hazelnut-flavoured smoothies due to a continued lack of interest from customers, labelling the news “nutterly disappointing”.
The drinks will be removed from supermarket shelves beginning April 2023, allowing the company to focus on its best-selling fruit and veg juices and smoothies. In the style of its usual witty humour, innocent wrote on social media:
‘In some nutterly disappointing news, we’re sad to say that our dairy-free range will be leaving shelves in the next few weeks. Which means this is your last call to go on stock up on our hazelnut, almond, and coconut dairy alternatives.
‘We know some of you really love these drinks, so we wanted to take this time to thank you for buying them. We really appreciate all five of you.’
Innocent Drinks first entered the dairy-free alternatives market in 2018 with the launch of its three vegan smoothie products. The drinks are made with the same base ingredients – spring water and sea salt – which are then blended with alternative milk derived from the nut or grain corresponding to the product’s name.
Responding to customers who are sad to see the products go, an innocent spokesperson wrote: ‘We’re sorry to say that just like Shakira’s hips, our sales figures don’t lie. We ask for your compassion at this time of mourning.’
Suggesting the company could give the drinks another try, a Twitter user wrote: ‘Always liked the coconut one. Sad they are leaving. Never know you might do a Neighbours and return them?’
Innocent wrote in response: ‘We are open to large sums of money from streaming giants to keep them alive.’
Other users said they weren’t aware the products existed or have never seen them on supermarket shelves. Nicola Foxfield wrote:
‘Literally the first time I’ve seen/heard of them. Not promoted enough by retailers, perhaps? Either way, I’m sad that the first I hear about them is their withdrawal,’ to which innocent responded with ‘[falls to the ground in sadness]’.
Although innocent’s dairy-free smoothie range failed to rack up sufficient interest, the company will continue to look at using dairy alternatives in its products. An innocent spokesperson said:
‘Whilst we know that some of our drinkers are sad to see the dairy alternatives range go, we are constantly creating new drinks for people to enjoy and we will continue to explore the use of dairy alternative ingredients as part of this.
‘In fact, we are already working on some tasty new recipes which include dairy alternative ingredients as part of our product innovation.’
