Summit Coffee reposted this
A story in 3 parts, about Summit Coffee and Hurricane Helene and community resilience. This could be a story of grief and heaviness, but instead we're telling one of hope. I. 2 weeks ago, we learned via text that Summit's cafe in Asheville's River Arts Disrict "is gone." The flood of shock and trauma and just plain sadness that hit me was a feeling I won't soon forget. My wife and I designed that RAD cafe together in 2017 -- it was our first effort outside of Davidson, and in so many ways pushed us to see what Summit "could be" if we were willing to take some chances. II. Almost immediately, Summit went into problem-solving mode. Through some random weekend Slack messages, we decided to donate 100% of proceeds from our e-commerce sales to the Asheville baristas. Support the people who lost so much, first, and figure out the business implications next. We're SO fortunate, in a way, that Summit is big enough to lean on each other in markets like Charlotte, Atlanta, and Charleston. Some of our friends in AVL aren't as lucky. But the response was extraordinary. In 7 days time, Summit sold more than 2,100 online orders. Our 4-person roastery production crew worked around the clock, pretty literally, and the entire Summit management team stood shoulder-to-shoulder and filled bags of coffee for the last 12 days. III. This last photo is the final day of our production push, the final small stack of coffee orders after 2 weeks of head down roasting coffee, printing labels, eating pizza, filling bags. What have I learned? That we have a remarkably people-oriented team who is entirely willing to shelve all work for a day, or for two weeks, to band together when something else comes up. And also that we have a community of friends, customers, businesses that will show up when we need them to. We sold more coffee online in 7 days that we had in the previous 9 months, and yet on Friday afternoon we were singing to Footloose and tossing bags across the warehouse floor. When all seems lost, Summit does quite well to swim upstream and convince others they can help us, too. I am so proud of our team the past 2 weeks, and so grateful for all of you out there who helped.