A Cumbrian coffee roaster has pledged to help its customers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Carvetii Coffee Roasters, the specialty roasters based at Threlkeld, will convert 10 per cent of all online coffee and tea orders into free coffee for its clients across the Lake District and the rest of the UK.

Anyone placing coffee and tea orders or activating new monthly subscriptions on Carvetii's website will be asked to nominate their favourite Carvetii-supplied coffee shop in the notes section.

The chosen coffee shops will then receive free coffee based on the amount of online sales and customer nominations.

For every 16 bags of coffee sold online, their favourite coffee shop will receive a free kilogram bag of Carvetii coffee.

For most coffee shops, a one-kilogram bag will produce around 60 cups of coffee.

Gareth Kemble, who co-owns Carvetii Coffee Roasters with Angharad Macdonald, said: “This is about us doing what we can to help our coffee shop customers through some of their most challenging times when either footfall is going to be at an all-time low as they change to offer a take-away service or they will have to close for an unknown period of time.

“We realised if we are potentially going to be selling more coffee and tea online to provide for an increasing number of people working from home, we wanted to find a way of translating that into being beneficial for our loyal coffee shop customers.

“We’ve worked with some of these businesses for years and been involved in many aspects of their operations.

"Whether that’s training staff, servicing machinery, advising on pricing, or just simply supplying coffee.

"Many are more than just customers - they are friends, and it’s heartbreaking to see them suffer.

"So this is our way of trying to ease the burden just a fraction and provide them with some free coffee when they’re back open for business.”

Carvetii, for a limited time, will also be relaxing its policy of only selling coffee in whole bean form. Bags of ground coffee will also be available to buy for the first time and will be mailed out to customers for free. Gareth added: “We appreciate that not everyone has the necessary equipment."