Over the years we have supported Alder Hey Children's Charity on many occasions. Through this we have created a great friendship between ourselves and the staff at the charity.
One of the highlights of our year is always the Alder Hey Dragon Boat Race - which we ended up coming 3rd at the 2021 meet. Here's hoping for 1st place this year!
At the race last year, the end-of-race speeches really made us understand how much the charity supports the hospital as funding from the NHS isn't always quite enough for all the equipment and resources that are needed.
Our Operations Manager, Adam, went to look at the new centre they were building, he came back absolutely blown away and enthused by what he heard and saw, this just instilled in us that there was more that we could do.
We approached Becky Parsons, a Corporate Partnership Officer at Alder Hey, earlier this year with our plan which was basically to do what we do best, sell great coffee - but also try to raise as much money as we possibly could for the charity! Becky was really enthusiastic about our ideas so we started planning straight away.
Choosing the beans
First item on the agenda was to pick which beans we were going to launch this partnership with.
We chose a Brazilian coffee from the Barbosa family, whose farm we had the pleasure of visiting in 2018, this single origin coffee has the classic coffee flavour profile which is great for espresso, but it is also a fantastic all-rounder.
Last year Vito participated in the Cup of Excellence Brazil to showcase what the farm, Fazenda Cachoeira, produces, Cup of Excellence is one of the most prestigious awards in the coffee world. With great coffee comes great success, DBarbosa Coffee won last year's competition and they are now ranked number one in Brazil.
Redesigning the product
To make this special edition bag stand out we had to completely redesign it.
With the help of the team at Bettsy Creative and being inspired by the branding of Alder Hey we ditched our usual white coffee bags for blue bags, and introduced a colourful label including Oli the Elephant, the mascot for the charity.
For every bag we sell of our Special Edition Brazil DBarbosa we will be donating £5 directly to Alder Hey Children's Charity. This special edition coffee is available to purchase in store, online and other businesses we work closely with throughout Liverpool and the Wirral.
The launch
On 21st March 2022 we officially launched our partnership with Alder Hey Children's Charity with an event in our Liverpool ONE store. We had a great turn out with all of our managers from across the company, staff from Alder Hey and friends of Bean.
The evening started with some cocktails, canapes, and of course... coffee.
Becky then took to the floor to speak about the charity, what the money raised goes towards, and the projects within the hospital that they have been able to help so far.
We heard about the incredible story of football-loving Leah Bennett, a 6 year old who was diagnosed with an unknown tumour in 2018. This tumour ran from her spine into her abdomen, and around her arteries in her legs. She had gone through 9 rounds of chemotherapy but this tumour was not budging.
Alder Hey surgeons met with surgeons from children's hospitals around the country to discuss a plan of action. Many decided that it was too risky to operate as the tumour was so big, and it wouldn't be in the best interests of Leah, as she was so little.
With the help of a detailed 3D print of Leah's tumour taken from a scan, it was decided that Leah's surgery was to get the go ahead. Surgeons from Alder Hey and a colleague from the Royal Liverpool Hospital spent 8 hours in surgery, they managed to remove 90% of the tumour.
Alder Hey Children's Charity funded the 3D printer and immersive distraction technology, their Arts for Health programme and has helped them with investing in research at their world-leading campus to understand and treat childhood cancer.
This in turn has helped save many lives, just like Leah's.
We are so proud to be supporting such a wonderful charity that has helped the lives of many families in Liverpool, and also the whole of the UK.
