“The Fruit Machine”
Report by Matt Mayler and Zachary Nanji-Pritchard
Day one (Friday) commenced with a 5am start, imagine our delight! We made our way to the tragically un-renowned Bristol Wholesale Fruit Market, where we met our competitors: Clevedon School. After receiving our T-shirts (a repugnant green colour, I must add) we headed out into the world of bartering and negotiation, with our newly pocketed £60. We split into teams where we were astounded by the absurdly low prices which the salesmen stoop to - 8 kilos (2000) berries for £4?! Negotiating techniques were vital,here, in making a good investment and, ultimately, profit. After our pile of fruit had built up in the middle of the market, trailers were stuffed as we headed over to Clevedon to make our products.
For the next four hours (no exaggeration), we were chopping, blending, juicing, squeezing, grating, pouring and storing our70 litres worth of smoothies, decimating the room as we went. Frankly, I lost track of the countless messy deaths of poor, unsuspecting bananas brutally thrown into the blender to be blitzed into a crimson frenzy of fruit amidst the kitchen carnage. Soon, it was over, but the fruit lost was never gone, as we saw it later in our nightmares. Yet,more madness was still to come…
Sunday morning arrived along with the same feeling reminiscent of the time before your maths exams. We entered College Green in the hope that our stall would be perfectly prepared and waiting for our arrival. Instead, we were met with the ripe stench of dog muck. There was plenty of work still to be done! After an hour of preparing (and cleaning) we were ready to sell, armed with the weapon of a banana suit with reflective sunglasses and a pink wig. Unbeknownst to us, blenders were provided! However, it soon became apparent that the ‘green’ power source was actually a guy in a repugnant green T-shirt on a bicycle, powering the blender. The next few hours seemed to ‘blend’ together in a joyous flurry of advertising, pouring and selling our fresh(ish) smoothies; we could just imagine ‘The Apprentice’ theme tune blaring out next to us! We were a hit with the public, who couldn’t get enough of our ‘Berry Blush’, ‘Banana Blitz’ and ‘Jungle Juice’. Furthermore, our name, ‘Lush Crush’, was also quite popular among the judges, who consisted of professional business men and women from well-known companies such as Barclay’s Bank.
At the end of the day, we were down to our last drips and drops of smoothies, so these final minutes saw the birth of drinks such as Blueberry Lemonade, Appleade and… iced water. These sold very well, at two pounds, particularly the iced water! And so, at three o’ clock on the dot, we poured our last drink, marking the end of our two fruitful days.
So, how did we find it? Let’s put it like this: our legs are aching and I’m pretty sure the smell of spilled smoothie will remain on my hands for at least another decade, but I can honestly say we loved every minute of it. We find ourselves back at school with an array of business knowledge about team work, sales strategies and just how satisfying the world of business can be. So, did we win? We hope to find out within the next month. In the meantime though, all we can do now is wait for the Lord Alan himself to point at us and say: “you’re hired!”
23/6/2014