Town and England legend Terry Butcher has been appointed a patron of Combat2Coffee.
The Community Interest Company is committed to producing, selling and serving the finest coffee, which enables its mission to improve the mental health, wellbeing and outcomes for veterans, ex-uniformed personnel, their families and communities.
Butcher, who is pictured above with founder Nigel Seaman, has long backed of calls for greater mental health support for veterans’ families, his son Christopher, who served in Afghanistan as a Captain in the Royal Artillery, having died in 2017 after a battle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The former Blues skipper has previously supported veterans’ breakfasts and will now play a greater role as Combat2Coffee looks to ramp up support for the armed forces community.
"I feel very honoured and humbled. My son would have loved it if he was still here,” said Butcher, who starts his role at the start of Armed Forces Week.
"My son followed the same path as Nigel. There’s a lot of veterans coming out now with mental and physical health troubles. They come crashing out of the military and there still isn’t a lot of help there for them.
"Combat2Coffee is a great organisation because it introduces people to a brew which gets them talking to people. It puts you at ease as a veteran. There is hope, great hope – but we want to give them even more.
"I am doing this for my son, what he suffered and what we all went through as a family.”
Combat2Coffee has forged partnerships with the likes of Ipswich Town Football Club and served more than 250,000 cups of hot drinks in 2023, each emblazoned with the contact details of numerous veteran and mental health charities.
The organisation also runs its own dedicated coffee shop and trains veterans at its Ipswich barista academy.
Seaman added: "All of us at Combat2Coffee are thrilled to welcome Terry to the team.
"He has been a huge supporter of ours since the very early days – and sadly knows all too well just how vital our mission is.
"Together we will not only look to change lives one sip at a time through our coffee, but utilise his reach to influence positive change at a national level. I look forward to seeing just how much we can achieve together.”