Food and drink products from Cumbria are being enjoyed by even more people across the United Kingdom as an innovative, family-run South Lakes business continues to expand.
A Day’s Walk, based near Cartmel, launched its online shopping and home delivery food and drink service in May this year.
The service is designed to support the local economy – every item it stocks comes from a local farmer, grower, producer or business located within a day’s walk of the business, meaning the food is exceptionally fresh and genuinely local.
The venture has proved hugely successful and now delivers to Cumbrian residents and holiday lets in all LA and CA postcode areas. A Day’s Walk employs four people plus a part time driver and has two temperature-controlled vans on the road, plus another vehicle for picking up stock.
And now the company has added a national delivery service in response to demand from customers in this country and overseas.
“We cannot deliver the lakes and mountains but we can deliver the taste of Cumbria,” said A Day’s Walk Co-founder Colin Sneath.
“The national delivery service has come about following requests from Cumbrian residents wishing to send what I like to think of as ‘the Lakes in a Box’ to friends, family and loved ones, especially where they haven’t seen them for a while as a result of Covid-19 restrictions, such as being in areas of partial lockdown.
“People are wanting to send our products as a gift to cheer them up or to mark anniversaries, such as birthdays.
“We have also had requests from visitors, who have had a delivery from A Day’s Walk to their holiday accommodation and now want to share some their favourite Lake District food and drink with friends back home.”
County-based businesses had also asked the company to introduce the new service so they could send something quintessentially Cumbrian to business partners and clients around the country, said Mr Sneath.
“We have also had international inquiries from ex-pats in countries such as Australia, Spain and the USA, who want to send a unique gift to family and friends in the UK since they have no prospect of getting home to see them at the moment,” he said.
A Day’s Walk is working in partnership with courier APC Overnight to deliver food and drink products from Cumbria to addresses all over the UK mainland.
The initiative has generated plenty of interest from customers. “We put something about it on our website and within 48 hours we had orders to send products to Kent, Essex and Burnley,” said Mr Sneath, 57.
He added that the company was adding two to three new local producers to its suppliers list every month. New suppliers include North Cumbrian juice producer Eva’s Organics; Mint Drinks, which produces a range of flavoured vodkas, gins and rums, including a Kendal mintcake-flavoured vodka; and Cartmel Valley Game and Smokehouse, which supplies items such as Cumbrian wild boar sausage and venison haunch.
Other suppliers include Grange Bakery, South Lakes Organic Milk, Heartwood Free Range Poultry, Mrs Prickett’s Preserves, Aireys Butchers, English Lakes Ice Cream, Hawkshead Relish, Bowness Bay Brewing, Ginger Bakers, Rinaldo’s Coffee, Lakeland Artisan, Huttons Chocolates, Lakeland Mues and Shed 1 Distillery.
“Adding national delivery to our residential delivery service will benefit all our local producer-partners and therefore the Cumbrian economy. We expect Christmas to be a very busy time for us as Cumbrian residents will have the opportunity of sending a truly authentic taste of the Lakes in a box to anyone on the UK mainland in these challenging times,” said Mr Sneath.
