Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Rebuilding Hospitality in WNC: How Asheville Restaurant and Lodging Leaders Responded to Hurricane Helene

Meetup Recap
meetuppodcasthospitalityhurricane-heleneasheville-recovery

From the AVLmeetup event on February 4, 2025

Rebuilding Hospitality in WNC: Lessons and Leadership After Helene

Event details, podcast, and full transcript ›

Rebuilding Hospitality in WNC, the February 2025 AVLmeetup at The Mule at Devil's Foot Beverage, brought together three of Asheville's hospitality leaders months after Hurricane Helene: Katie Button of Cúrate, Molly Irani of Chai Pani Restaurant Group, and Jordan Turchin of The Horse Shoe Farm. Rodrigo Afanador of Vesta Property Management and Zac Ruiz co-hosted the panel in front of 134 attendees, covering how each business survived the storm, fed their communities, and started planning for the 2025 season.

Key Takeaways

  • Molly Irani messaged Chai Pani's 213 employees after the storm. Only 12 could reach the group's one location with power, and by Sunday afternoon 750 sandwiches had gone out in the first helicopter drops.
  • Katie Button said Cúrate laid off about 30% of its staff, still had not reopened La Bodega by Cúrate as of the meetup, and was about to bring back lunch service Tuesday through Thursday for the first time since before the pandemic.
  • Jordan Turchin's farm became an aid staging area after his sister connected the family to Global Empowerment Mission. Fifty to sixty responders based helicopters and semi trucks on the property while his team fed and housed them.
  • Zac Ruiz's opening market segment put the median active Buncombe County listing at 85 days or more on the market, versus a handful of days when AVLmeetup began, with homes under contract at a median of 66 days.
  • Katie Button and Jordan Turchin both landed on the same word to describe the post-Helene hospitality industry: community.

The First Hours of Hurricane Helene

Katie Button hiked out of her driveway with her two kids, ages 6 and 10, because fallen trees had blocked the car. Molly Irani climbed a mountain of downed trees in her South Asheville neighborhood and found it buried; her 81-year-old neighbor, working around a torn rotator cuff, chainsawed a path out. Jordan Turchin had a farm full of panicked guests to evacuate to Charlotte, the farm's second forced shutdown in seven years after COVID.

With no reliable communication, Irani's team found Publix was offering free WiFi in its parking lot and biked there to send messages, at roughly 15 minutes each, trying to account for everyone.

Turning Hospitality Skills Into Disaster Relief

World Central Kitchen called Button on Saturday and asked if her team could start cooking meals the next day. Irani's team, working from the one Chai Pani location that still had power, mobilized the 12 employees who could get out and turned donated lamb kebabs into sandwiches, 750 of which went out in Sunday's first helicopter drops. Turchin's farm became a command center after his sister in Miami reached Global Empowerment Mission: the organization arrived Saturday afternoon with semi trucks, and 50 to 60 responders stayed on the property running helicopter drops while Turchin's farm fed and housed them on its backup water system.

Layoffs, Reopenings, and a Business Upside Down

Once tourists stopped coming for the fall season, all three businesses cut deep. Button said Cúrate made permanent layoffs and was still running about 30% below pre-storm staffing as of the meetup, with La Bodega by Cúrate not yet reopened. Irani's group also cut 30%, even as it pushed forward with the grand opening of a newly renovated original Chai Pani location that same week, eventually reopening all three restaurants and its spice factory on trucked-in water. Turchin took the opposite bet: he opened his farm's restaurant seven days a week across three services and dropped prices in the restaurant and spa for locals and storm victims.

By February, staffing was turning around: Turchin was hiring ahead of the farm's March season, and Irani said Chai Pani's numbers were climbing as staff who had left to stay with family returned. Irani still described the broader small business community as "teetering at a tipping point," carrying pandemic-era debt with no cushion left. Button pointed to a structural gap: FEMA gives individuals a functioning, if imperfect, system to get relief money, and nothing comparable exists for businesses.

What the Storm Changed

Turchin built a winter wellness programming series he had never tried before, to fill a season he expected to be dead, and it worked well enough that he plans to expand it every winter. Irani ran a casual "hurricane hot bar" at Chai Pani to reinvent service, and guests responded so strongly, happy to have that space again without tourists, that it reshaped how she thinks about casual service; she also noticed employees returned with more gratitude than in the tense post-pandemic years. Button said Cúrate is leaning further into Cúrate at Home, its e-commerce arm, a revenue stream that held up through the slow holiday months.

Questions

  • What was your first thought when you realized Helene was not just another storm? Button thought of her kids' safety amid fallen trees and no cell service; Irani, of accounting for her 213 employees; Turchin, of evacuating his guests.

  • How did you pivot your business strategy once tourists stopped coming? Button and Irani each cut staff by about 30%. Turchin expanded instead, opening seven days a week and cutting prices for locals.

  • What's your message to investors hesitant about the Western North Carolina hospitality sector? Button said Asheville's community of creative makers separates it from the rest of the country. Irani cited relief workers who told her, "I have never seen a community mobilized, like this community did." Turchin pointed to how attached both visitors and former staff remain to the area.

  • What skill became unexpectedly crucial for business survival after Helene? Irani said tenacity, including learning to advocate with organizations like the NCRLA to get emergency approval for water filtration, since the code had never existed for hurricane conditions in the mountains. Button said knowing how to physically plug a water tank into a building to route fresh water around the city system.

Zac Ruiz's opening data segment, drawn from the Ruiz Report and the live dashboard at REMC.co, tracked the same slowdown in real estate terms, including one Vesta rental listing that picked up almost 80 new competing units within six months. For the first time in a decade, Ruiz said, it might be cheaper to rent in Asheville than to own, a shift he framed as a calling card to bring people back.

Back to blog