First and foremost, we want to thank all our customers for bearing with us in these difficult times.

When so many people are suffering from being apart on special occasions, we understand how keen you are to reach out and send them a token of your love and wish to be with them. And when trips to the supermarket are tricky and when food so often represents the way we show our love to each other – what better gift than a tasty food and wine hamper.

Isolation is so difficult and particularly birthdays, special anniversaries and occasions such as Easter are so hard to celebrate without being surrounded by those you love as you would ordinarily be.

So, we at Hay Hampers are working especially hard to try to help in the very small way we can, by perfectly presenting delicious treats (and a huge number of birthday cakes!) into hamper baskets or gift boxes and sending them directly to those you love with your messages of love, joy and hope in our printed gift cards.

We are regularly updating our Covid19 delivery update page (which you can find here) with links to this placed prominently on our home page, delivery pages, and terms and conditions page. The situation is ever evolving but as I write today I can tell you, overall we are coping very well.

Our couriers are doing outstanding work under huge unprecedented surges in demand for their service. As long standing and important customers, we have platinum service levels in our account with them and so they are really doing exceptional work for us -we couldn’t be prouder of them. Although occasionally they have missed the service we have with them, the vast majority continue to have a delivery attempt within the period we pay for. The problems when they occur are usually down to staffing levels or the volume needing delivering on a single delivery route. They have also had to close their Sunday delivery service and their Saturday service has been limited due to staffing numbers.

They are abiding closely to social distancing, with signatures being taken via proxy, i.e. they ask for a name from a safe 2m distance and note this on the record, so we continue to have traceability of all our parcels.

In our hamper premises, our elves are also abiding closely with government safety recommendations. With those who can working from home, and those who must go into work, working in individual offices or at a minimum 2 metre distance, with gloves and regular handwashing also. We are lucky as a small family business, this is possible in the generous space we have.

We are also working all the hours we can over and above our usual opening hours to ensure we answer all your queries in a reasonable period, and ensure the higher than usual demand can be met and your hampers can be packed and sent as quickly as we are able. Unfortunately, we have occasionally had to close certain dispatch dates, it is important to us that we put service and honesty above all else. We do not undertake these decisions lightly but we want to continue to offer the service levels of which we are so proud of outside of these unusual circumstance and properly represent ourselves and our company to the new customers we are welcoming.

Our suppliers of all the tasty treats we put in our hampers are all also working very hard to maintain their supply. Occasionally we have had small delays due to transport difficult or their difficulty in sourcing individual ingredients. In these circumstances we are making substitutions to a similar or greater value of similar product types, and we are grateful for your understanding.

We wish you all a safe, sane, healthy and ‘hampery’ lockdown.