Coffee gifts for nurses, and how to thank a whole ward

Send it to the ward, not to one nurse

A gift to one person turns into a small piece of admin. Who it came from, whether it needs recording, whether the ward manager should know. A bag on the worktop in the ward kitchen is none of those things.

So put the ward on the address line. Not a name. The ward and the words "staff room" do more work than a card with one nurse's name on it, because it takes the decision out of that nurse's hands.

It also fixes the practical problem. A ward runs round the clock and the team rotates through it. Whoever you had in mind may be off for the next four days.

Check the trust's policy before you check the price

NHS trusts set their own policies on staff accepting gifts. They are not identical to each other and they are not the same as the rules where you work.

We are not going to give you a number. Plenty of websites will, and a figure that is right for one trust in one year is not right for every trust in every year. Ask the ward manager instead, or look for the trust's gifts and hospitality policy on its own website. If the policy separates gifts from patients and families from gifts sent by companies that sell to the trust, read the part that describes you.

If that sounds like a lot of thought for a bag of coffee, it is the argument for sending something shared and ordinary to the ward rather than something personal to one person.

• Ask the ward manager. One question, one sentence back, and it is settled.
• Search the trust's own website for "gifts and hospitality". That is a good phrase to start with, though not every trust publishes the policy.
• Address it to the ward, never to an individual.
• Write who it is from on the card. If anything has to be recorded, that is the line that gets recorded.
• Ignore any site that tells you a pound figure is fine. Including this one. We are not giving you one.

What a ward kitchen actually has in it

Assume a kettle. Assume no grinder. Assume the good mug belongs to someone. Past that it varies: a cafetière somebody brought in from home, sometimes a filter machine, often a jar of instant and a box of teabags.

So buy it ground unless you know there is a grinder. Whole bean and ground are the same price here and we do not charge for grinding. If you cannot ask what they have got, choose medium. It works in a cafetière and it works in a filter machine.

Buy for the number of people, not for the gesture. At 15g a mug, which is a normal cafetière dose, a 250g bag is sixteen mugs and a bit. On a ward that might be two days.

Then check the obvious thing. Some of the ward does not drink coffee at all, someone will be on decaf, and we do not have a decaf. Off Duty is planned and nothing decaffeinated is roasting. If that describes the ward you have in mind, buy the teabags and put the money somewhere it gets used.

What we would send, including the things we do not sell

Ordered by what we would actually do, not by what we make on it. Four of these are not ours and one of them is free.

• Blue Light Blend£16.50

  Planned as a medium-dark blend, and one of the two in the first roast. The intent is that it goes flat rather than sour if it sits in the pot, which is what happens on a ward.

• Handover Blend£15.50

  Aimed at the changeover pot two crews share, so the intent is a wide brewing window. It follows the first roast rather than being in it.

• Coffee Club£140

  Ten 250g bags at £14 each, for a team clubbing together on one order. Ten bags sold is one tenth-bag credit, and on this order you name the emergency services mess room it goes to.

• Insulated flask£28

  For one person rather than the ward, and for someone on nights who would rather not wait for the ward kettle. Made to order, out within ten working days, which is sooner than the coffee.

• A large tin of biscuits from a supermarket

  Not ours. It can be on the ward this week and ours cannot. If the thank you is time-sensitive, this is the honest answer.

• A written compliment through the trust's own feedback route

  Free, and it names the people who did the work. Nothing arrives on the ward, so the gifts policy is not the first thing you are reading.

• Unscented hand cream

  Also not ours. Hands that get washed all shift, and everyone on the ward has a view on which one is best.

• A box of decent teabags

  A coffee company telling you to buy teabags. Plenty of the ward drinks tea, and whoever keeps buying them never gets a card.

The tenth bag, and what it does not cover yet

Every ten 250g bags sold send 250g to a UK emergency services mess room. Forty bags send a full kilo. It is a target we hold to at any volume rather than a cap: sell past the plan and the tenth bag keeps going, still one in ten.

Credits accumulate and ship in consolidated runs once a station's share reaches 4kg, addressed to the mess room. Stations self-certify, which means someone who works there confirms it. We publish bags earned and bags delivered with an "as at" date, and both numbers are zero until the first bag ships.

It goes to emergency services mess rooms. Hospital wards are not on that list today. We could widen it quietly and never mention the date it changed, which is the sort of thing this company is trying not to do, so: not yet, and if it changes the change will carry a date.

When it would actually arrive

Nothing is roasted. Every order is a pre-order. You pay when checkout opens, we buy the green coffee, and it is roasted in the UK in small batches. Cancel any time before it ships and you get all of it back, no reason needed.

We have never been to a farm. The green will be bought through a UK importer, and the blends are still being built around the coffees we have named, so we describe them in the tense the paperwork supports and no further.

Delivery is free anywhere in the UK while we launch, UK addresses only for now. The 250g packs are sized for a letterbox and are planned to are planned to go out on a tracked 48-hour service. The roast date will be printed on the front of every bag next to a 12-month best-before, both labelled, so whoever opens it on the ward can see how old it is.

If the thank you needs to land this week, buy the biscuits. We would rather say that than take the order.