Please Venmo Your Chef
After Helene, chefs and restaurants in Asheville have appealed to customers to help pay the bills
By Eric Barton
The Sunday after Hurricane Helene swept Asheville’s River Arts District from the map, P.J. Bond went to see how bad it was. He’s the owner of Mean Pies, a pop-up that operated from a food truck outside Plēb winery, and he’d already heard stories about the district’s utter destruction.
What he found looked post-apocalyptic. It’s as if a boulder dropped from a mountaintop and flattened everything. Mud and muck, knee deep, everywhere. Slabs of concrete where buildings had been, looking like grave markers. Unrecognizable piles of debris that had been the winery, and the truck, washed down river, on its side, trashed.
“It’s one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever seen,” Bond says. “It’s a really, really wild thing to go look at.”
For about a week, Bond and his main employee in the operation, Zach Brin just simply wondered what would be next. They started noticing a trend on social networking, and so they joined in. They created a GoFundMe page asking former customers for donations to help them rebuild. So far, they’ve raised just shy of four figures from 88 donations.
The money won’t cover their personal bills--it’s not a replacement for a paycheck--but Bond says it’s a relief. “It’s a little pause in all our worry about the next steps,” Bond says.
Since Helene struck Asheville on Sept. 27, restaurants and chefs have begun to ask customers for help, some seeking funds to rebuild and others looking for money they say will go directly to their employees.
The remnants of the truck used by Mean Pies
The appeals speak to the desperate state that restaurants in Asheville find themselves in. The storm struck at the start of Asheville’s busiest season in the fall, when restaurants typically make the money that’ll get them through the lean times of winter.
The requests for money also speak of the difficulty of restaurants and their employees to find replacements for their lost incomes, juggling whether to seek work elsewhere or take unemployment benefits that might replace only a portion of their salaries.
The list of places asking for help includes Cursus Kĕmē brewery, flattened by the Swannanoa River, which raised $20,000 of a half-million-dollar goal. Gourmand Asheville collected $8,000 of its goal of $250,000 to rebuild its rotisserie chicken and wine shop. Mother Bakery surpassed its $20,000 goal to support its staff. Just $500 has been raised so far of The Buxton Chicken Palace’s goal of collecting $30,000 for its crew. And White Duck, the much-loved taco spot that’s grown into a regional chain, has raised just shy of $18,000 of a $100,000 goal to rebuild the River Arts District restaurant.
Mother Bakery’s GoFundMe page
Among the chefs who have started fundraisers is William Dissen of The Market Place, a farm-to-table restaurant that’s been on historic Wall Street since 1979. The loss of running water after the storm forced Dissen to close. A month later, with no real timetable on when the city can get drinkable water flowing through the pipes, Dissen isn’t sure when he can reopen.
In response, Dissen started a GoFundMe page that will go directly to his staff, setting a $50,000 goal. So far, he’s raised more than $37,000 that will be split by his 35 staff members. “It’s still not enough,” Dissen says. “It’ll be a nice little chunk for them to come up for air, but it’s not enough for them to survive.”
For Dissen, he’s hoping the money can keep his team together. Earlier this year The Market Place earned a nomination for Outstanding Restaurant from the James Beard Awards, a national honor. “It takes a really strong team of people and kind souls to achieve something of that caliber,” Dissen says.
Now, he’s helping some members of his team find jobs in other cities, and he says it’s heartbreaking to think they may not return. Many of them lost everything in Helene. “There’s been a lot of horror stories people have had to endure.”
It’ll be no easier for Dissen. He applied for a Small Business Administration loan after the hurricane but found out by email that the disaster relief fund ran out of money. He’s received awards for his restaurant’s commitment to green policies, but now the energy-efficient water-cooled walk-in cooler is keeping him from considering reopening. “It’s quite the financial blow not only to my business but to our city and region in general,” he says.
The former home of White Duck
For Bond, he says the money raised by GoFundMe will help him and his partner buy new equipment, maybe a new food truck. “I was really torn about asking people for money,” Bond says. “But I lost my entire business. It was my job, it was Zack’s job. We lost our jobs.”
Since the storm, they’ve done pop-ups on Sundays at Manicomio in downtown Asheville. They asked only for donations to cover the costs of the ingredients, but the generosity of those who walked away with pizzas, along with the $9,580 of their $15,000 goal raised from GoFundMe, is helping them plan for what’s next.
Bond says: “It’s so cool to see so many people adding their little bit.”
The Complete Guide to Asheville
Best Things to do in Asheville
Asheville is one of those places where you can experience a little bit of everything—from outdoor adventures to quirky cultural spots, all while sipping a craft beer.
Asheville’s Best Restaurants
Allow me, a seasoned Asheville eater, to guide you through six of the best spots in a town where you can’t throw a stone without hitting a farm-to-table gem.
The Best Hotels in Asheville
Whether you’re here to hike, eat, or just soak up the mountain vibes, these five hotels are the ones to book if you want to do Asheville right.
By Caitlin Rothstein
As a born-and-bred New Yorker, my idea of "outdoors" has always been the Central Park Zoo—one part curated wilderness, two parts high-strung tourists. But in Asheville, nature wasn’t a background character; it was the main act, the star of the show.