Supporting our communities: thank you to all the heroes

Monday 27 April, 2020

NHS and key workers, we can’t thank you enough. So, to help support everyone who’s keeping the country moving right now, we've been delivering more batches of our Ready-to-Drink cans. It’s just one of our small tokens of appreciation to the people out there who are giving so much.

When we closed our stores, our store teams did a brilliant job of donating surplus food to local food banks, care homes, NHS teams and key workers. We’re now looking at getting as many supplies of our coffee as we can to key workers, to help keep them fuelled as they continue working hard to ensure the safety of the nation.

So far, we have delivered over 861,000 Ready-To-Drink cans* along with donating food and other materials, including 40,000 Roast and Ground coffee packs to NHS call centres, hospitals, police and fire stations and other key facilities.

Giving our heroes a welcome treat

We've created 1,200 Coffee Packs to doctors and nurses staying at hotels near the new NHS Nightingale Hospitals in London and Manchester. As many coffee shops, bars and restaurants will be closed, we wanted to ensure they could make a great cup of coffee in their hotel rooms.

The packs contain well deserved treats like our Costa Coffee reusable cups, a sweet snack and cafetières supplied by our friends at VonShef to brew our Roast & Ground coffee in before they start their day.

So far we've delivered...

• 30,000 Ready-to-Drink cans to the NHS Nightingale Hospital at the ExCel Centre

• 460 Coffee Packs to Doctors and Nurses staying at hotels close to the NHS Nightingale Hospital in London (London Hilton ExCeL, London Novotel ExCel and London Hilton Waterloo)

• 160 Coffee Packs to Doctors and Nurses staying at hotels close to the NHS Nightingale Hospital in Manchester (Manchester Stock Exchange Hotel and Manchester Hotel Football)

• 350 bags of Roast & Ground coffee to the Nightingale Hospital in Manchester

• 10,000 reusable cups to 999 and 111 call centres.

Providing support to the charities who help others

Our supply chain teams have also been busy working to make sure that food in our warehouses can be donated to people in need. So far we have donated over 21,000 cases of product across our food range to 35 charities, community organisations, schools and NHS teams nationally including:

• Fareshare

• The Bread and Butter Thing

• Hope Centre

• The Real Junk Food Project

• Noah Luton

The response has been overwhelming, with teams all around the UK receiving much-needed supplies while enjoying a well-deserved treat from us.