Coffee lover given a Costa-themed send-off

Karen Lloyd loved coffee. Alongside friends she would spend her time shopping and frequenting the high-street coffee chain Costa.

In fact, she liked the outlets so much that she was dubbed ‘Costa Karen’ by her buddies.

So, when she passed away after losing the battle with cancer aged 51, her family thought it fitting to give her an individual send-off; they commissioned a bespoke coffin to be made.

Burgundy in colour, Costa’s logo was painted on one side whilst on the opposing pane read the words ‘one shot, extra hot skinny latte’ to honour her usual drink of choice.

Lynzi Barrett, a close friend of the deceased, said that Karen ‘wanted a coffin with a difference and Alan, her husband, wondered what could be done.’

A call was made to a local funeral director and within the hour the Costa-themed coffin was confirmed, bringing ‘a smile to all our faces [in] a time of sorrow’.

Both the funeral service and the subsequent wake were based around her passion for Costa Coffee, shopping and sleeping.

Her husband, Alan, 45, said of the proceedings: ‘The funeral was a celebration of her life and it’s good to do it on a humorous side.

‘When we asked the funeral directors for a Costa Coffee-themed coffin, they said “you what? We’ve never done one of those before.” But they managed to do one.’

A Costa spokesman commented on the news story, saying: ‘Our thoughts are of course with the family at this difficult time.

‘Clearly she enjoyed her Costa coffee and her family felt it was an appropriate addition to their farewell to her.’

Speaking during the service, Reverend Captain Clive Deverell remarked that both Karen’s humour and courage was ‘impressive’, before joking that ‘[s]he is (probably) making the baristas in heaven’s lives rather difficult with her one-shot extra hot skinny lattes.’

Despite her illness and her battle with cancer, she dedicated a lot of her time to charity work and raised in excess of £2,000 for the Breast Cancer Unit at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon.

The 51-year-old leaves behind her husband, Alan, and two sons.

header photo: Thomas Petersen, used under creative commons