How do we make our smoothies?

Many of our clients ask us exactly what ingredients and approach we use to make our delicious pedal blended fruit smoothies. Today we will give you an insight so you know how we work at events with our ingredients and also how you can apply the same techniques for perfect smoothies at home (with or without your own blending bike!).

Smoothie Bike Blender

The trick we employ is to use high quality frozen fruit (and sometimes vegetables) rather than fresh and blend straight from frozen it with apple juice as a base. The reasons for choosing good quality frozen fruit/veg over fresh are as follows;

  1. The produce is always in perfect condition. It’s frozen at it’s best and stays in that state until you blend it so the taste is consistently good.
  2. As it’s frozen at this optimum point the nutrients are also locked in so the health benefits are also maximised and consistent.
  3. The combination of frozen produce and juice give a delicious thick smoothie which looks great.
  4. The finished drink is ice cold without adding any ice! So no water diluting the flavour or the nutrients.
  5. Finally the produce is already peeled, chopped and washed where appropriate, so no need for knives, chopping boards etc at the event, keeping operations simple and the speed of service high.

You can emulate this at home either by freezing your own fresh fruit at its best or buying frozen fruit in bags, large supermarkets carry a good range now and it means you always have your ingredients ready in your kitchen and minimise waste!

The only word of caution we have for doing this at home is that frozen fruit can be quite hard so a blender of reasonable quality is recommended.

Enjoy your delicious and nutritious ice cold smoothies (after all summer is just around the corner….well kind of)!

 

The Benefits of Using a Smoothie Bike at a Health and Wellbeing Event

So why is a smoothie bike a good activity to have at a wellbeing event? Well they are a fantastic interactive tool to physically demonstrate and link healthy eating and exercise. Rather than just having somebody telling (lecturing or preaching could be inserted here!) your guests what they should be doing, a smoothie bike actively involves the individual in a fun way to physically use their own body to produce a healthy drink. It is not too strenuous and takes around a minute or so to complete so virtually anyone at any level of fitness can take part, and the people who can most be helped by this education are often those that are put off by taking part in activities as they feel they are too unfit. The smoothie bike is a great leveller, no lycra or training required, it is always fun and brings out the kid in most of us and the vast majority of people have a big smile on their face as they pedal blend. Don’t believe me? Just look at this lady using one of our bikes at a festival!

B&J1

The range of drinks that can be produced on a smoothie bike is as big as your imagination. Are you promoting 5 a day within your organisation? Then a pure fruit or fruit and vegetable smoothie can be easily mixed up. Is your event on a very hot day? You can crush ice in the blender or use frozen ingredients to have a deliciously thick ice cold drink. Add herbs, nuts, seeds, milk or coconut oil to produce the most nutritionally balanced smoothie the world has ever tasted! It will all blend using your guests pedal power in minutes if not seconds!

M&C1

Stuck for ideas on what to blend or worried whether a smoothie bike will be right for your event? Feel free to contact us and we will be happy to pass on our 5 years+ experience of pedal blending at events to see if we can help or not.

Good Morning Britain’s Winter Warrior Bikes!

T’was a dark and cold November morn when 2 of our smoothie bikes could be heard clinking and clanking up the M6 to Liverpool to make their national TV debut and meet the nations favourite doctor!

Good Morning Britain’s Dr Hilary and his vintage ambulance were on location at the Liverpool 1 shopping centre to meet some locals and talk about preventing the dreaded winter cold and flu that hits so many of us when the weather starts to really get chilly. One of the ways to try and safeguard against this is of course healthy eating, and what better way to consume your vitamins and minerals that are needed for a strong immune system than a delicious smoothie! And to supercharge that already wonderful experience what healthier way could there be to blend the smoothies than by doing some exercise and using our blending bikes and pedal power!

Barry and Oscar on Board!

Barry and Oscar on Board!

We had been contacted to provide the bikes and the smoothies for the filming and of course were delighted to be involved, we support anything that promotes health and wellbeing to the public and is really what Love Smoothie Bike are all about. It meant a very early start as we were on location at 6am with filming just after 7. Despite a couple of very nervous bikes and long deliberations about which colour handlebar grips to wear, we were on time and set up ready for the live broadcast.

Pedal blending the vitamin C and antioxidant rich smoothies (the ones we used were Berry Go Round sachets by Love Taste – frozen strawberries, blackberries and raspberries blended with an apple juice base) were a local barber Barry (from Penny Lane no less) and his son Oscar, who was appearing on telly before heading off to school! Not a bad start to the day.

IMG_7332

Live Broadcast!

The bikes kept Barry and Oscar warm and blended the fruit beautifully, the smoothies were delicious and the filming all went to plan (although I did fear for a pedestrian when Dr Hilary started up his ambulance and drove off into the distance while waving at us out of the window!).

Dr Hilary Pedal Blending!

Dr Hilary Pedal Blending!

After filming everyone enjoyed a smoothie and took photos with the good Doctor including one of him on our bike! We will be posting a video clip from the show shortly so please keep an eye out for that. The smoothie recipe a video clip and other information from the day is featured on the Good Morning Britain website, so please go and have a look there too! http://www.itv.com/goodmorningbritain/health/dr-hilarys-winter-warriors

Cocktail Bike Arcade at your Xmas Party!

With full insurance for alcoholic drinks to be pedal blended aboard our custom bikes you can add some competitive fun to your Christmas party and offer your guests Cocktail Bike Arcade!

bikes xmas no peeps sm

Like Smoothie Bike Arcade your guests will compete in a game of pedal skill to see who can be the closest to pedal blending the perfect drink. But as it is the party season we can offer the option of healthy refreshing non alcoholic smoothies as well as delicious fruity cocktails!

Designated drivers and Yuletide revellers alike can all enjoy some light hearted fun and get into the spirit of Christmas!

Please get in touch for more information!

Best

Love Smoothie Bike

Summer starts with Smoothie Bike Arcade!

Earlier this summer Paddington Central Business Campus invited Love Smoothie Bike to kick off a week of summer events with a 6 bike smoothie bike arcade installation. We were positioned in the middle of their events amphitheatre with the blending bikes, 3 arcade screens and hundreds of smoothie ingredients.

Workers, shoppers and anyone else were able to compete to try and pedal blend the perfect drink on our fun skill based arcade game, and everyone who played received their own blended Love Smoothie and a great tote bag courtesy of Paddington Central and featuring their new branding!

A great way to introduce the summer, a new look for a brand and competitive pedal blending into the collective consciousness of W2!

PCEvents Blog