The company’s story begins in Aberdeen, Scotland, where Nicolas Lecloux and his fellow students Inga Koster and Marco Knauf are doing a semester abroad and meeting for coffee and cake somewhere in an unhip grandmother’s café that also served fruit puree. In Great Britain a market of millions, in Deutschland completely unknown at the time. At home in Germany, the three business administration students seek support from biologists and chemists and begin to puree – with limited success. The team looked for lenders and bottlers, then sales channels. The three founders ignored advice on using plastic instead of glass bottles. The breakthrough came when the gas station chain Aral listed the smoothies in glass bottles – and big brands like Chiquita discovered the smoothie market and advertised it.
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The provocative marketing strategy came about on the side, Lecloux says in the interview with the boss. “It wasn’t a strategy, I think it kind of rocked.” The team sits together, thinks about ideas, finds something funny. “And then there’s nobody there who says, ‘You can’t do that, that’s too blatant.'” In a way, True Fruits is like “a bunch of kids without adults” – even today.