A decade ago three friends mashed £500 worth of oranges, bananas and pineapples together on their kitchen table to make a giant smoothie. Yesterday they made what could be described as a giant killing – they sold a small stake in their company to Coca-Cola for £30 million.

Innocent Drinks, now Britain’s leading smoothie maker, was valued at up to £300 million in the deal, in which the American soft drinks giant bought a 10 to 20 per cent stake.

The co-founders, Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright, will not be taking any money out of the business as a result of the deal, but will use all funds raised by Coke to finance Innocent’s expansion into Europe, on which the American giant will also provide expert advice.

Though the company is known for its idealistic stance, Mr Reed insisted that the business would not be compromised by getting into bed with Coke, which is seen by many as a symbol of US cultural hegemony.

He told The Times: “We have been massively impressed by the people at Coke. Everything has been about ensuring that we continue to do what we are doing and to do more of it. We are in business, let’s not be naive about this, but we do have this deeply felt mission about making only natural, healthy products, pioneering the use of better, socially and environmentally aware ingredients, packaging and production techniques, donating money to charity and having a point of view on the world. All that will remain.

“It is going to be entirely positive for people who drink our drinks. Myself, Adam and Jon will all continue to lead the business – we are going nowhere.”

The venture began in 1998 in a kitchen in West London, when the three men, then working in management consultancy and advertising, bought enough fresh fruit to make smoothies to sell at the Parson’s Green jazz festival. The three set up a stall with a sign reading: “Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?” alongside two bins for the empties, one labelled “yes” and the other “no”. By the end of the day, the “yes” bin was overflowing.

Mr Reed quit his job at the advertising agency BMP, Mr Balon left the management consultancy firm McKin-sey and Mr Wright resigned from the rival consultancy Bain & Co, and the three launched their business commercially the following year.

After yesterday’s deal with Coca-Cola, the holdings of the three are now valued at between £30 million and £60 million each. They will each own 20 per cent of the business after the deal, while Innocent’s staff own another 10 per cent. The remaining shareholder is Maurice Pinto, the American business angel who backed the team with £200,000 when they started out.

The three men met as students at the University of Cambridge and conceived the idea of selling smoothies on a snowboarding holiday. On its first day of trading, April 28, 1999, the business sold 24 smoothies. This week alone, it will sell about two million.

Coca-Cola’s investment comes as its bitterest rival, PepsiCo, steps up its attempt to win market share in the smoothies sector. Pepsi bought the Nottingham-based fruit juice and smoothie brand PJ Smoothies four years ago and, last year, launched its juice brand Tropicana into the smoothie market in a direct attack on Innocent.

Mr Reed said that after six months looking for new investors “we had three offers. The venture capital community was pretty interested but, with those guys, you get the money, not what Coke can do for us. These people really do know what they’re doing. They are the No 1 in juice world-wide: that was something I didn’t know until we started talking to them. They are big into healthy, natural stuff too, it’s just that people here don’t know about it.

“We have spoken to some of our consumers and the majority of them have been very supportive about it. It won’t please everyone – some people will have a less than positive reaction – but this is the right thing to do.”

Innocent currently employs 250 people, but Mr Reed expects this to rise after Coke’s investment.

“Europe is this thing that is growing extremely rapidly,” he said. “In UK supermarkets we have 100 per cent distribution, but in Europe, only 20 to 25 per cent of supermarkets have smoothies. So there is lots to go for.”

Innocent Veg Pots, the all-vegetable ready meal concept launched late last year, has also been flying off the shelves, Mr Reed said.

“We thought we’d sell four to six million this year, but it’s going to be nearer ten million.”

Swallowed up by the corporate world

— Ben & Jerry’s Sold by its founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield to Unilever in 2000 for £175 million. Four years later the once-radical ice-cream maker was admitting that it was “beginning to look like the rest of corporate America”

— Pret A Manger The fresh sandwich maker beloved by middle-class office workers sold a third of itself to its antithesis, McDonald’s, for about £25 million in 2001. Pret was forced to say that the burger chain had no role in its decision making. Eventually, though, McDonald’s sold to the private equity firm Bridgepoint, which took over Pret last year in a £345 million deal

— The Body Shop The late Dame Anita Roddick and her husband made £130 million when they sold The Body Shop to L’Oréal, the French cosmetics giant, for £652 million. L’Oréal’s stance on animal testing was seen by antivivisection campaigners as not matching Dame Anita’s zeal, but the company’s trading remained healthy

— Green & Blacks The organic chocolate brand was swallowed up by Cadbury in 2006 for £24 million, although its founders, Craig Sams and his wife, Josephine Fairley, had already sold 80 per cent to investors – to relatively little complaint from chocolate eaters

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