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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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More of what’s going around, including yet another bottle shop, Casual Pint, planned for south Asheville. Here we go:

-The Casual Pint Craft BeerMarket is coming to 1863 Hendersonville Road. This is the second bottle shop/bar to announce a new location in south Asheville. Craft Centric is under construction at 257 Long Shoals Road.

Sow True Seed is moving from the South Slope to 243 Haywood Street in downtown.

-A storytelling contest open to school children in grades 3-12 is accepting submissions now through Sept. 25. It’s part of the Woods & Wilds Storytelling and Music Festival, set for Oct. 1 at the Salvage Station and is hosted by the Dogwood Alliance.

Madison Pot Pie is moving from Marshall to Woodfin, says owner Laurie Lamb in a social media post.

Garden & Gun magazine calls Asheville one of the South’s best food towns.

-This incredible “story map” created by the city of Asheville emphasizes the importance of protecting the French Broad River by showing how “we all live downstream.”

-Superstition Boutique is coming to 46 Commerce Street in downtown.

-The former Doc Chey’s restaurant space at 37 Biltmore Ave. in downtown Asheville is up for lease. The description says the property could be considered “beachfront property” because the location is such a hot spot with pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic:

[Spake Real Estate Listing] 2nd generation restaurant. Unique opportunity to follow Doc Chey’s 15 yrs. of successful sales volume & customer loyalty to create Asheville’s next great restaurant. Considered “beachfront property”, Biltmore Ave is probably most visited street downtown. Next to aloft Hotel & 404 space City Parking deck. Lease rate base on 8% of Doc Chey’s gross sales while only open 5 days a week.

-“Listen To America: A HuffPost Road Trip,” a multi-state bus tour, will stop in Asheville from noon to 4 p.m. at Wedge Brewing at Foundation/12 Bones restaurant on Sept. 25, according to a press release. There’s also a morning panel discussion about women’s health beginning at 8:30 a.m. at the Asheville Visitors’ Center, Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Center for Graduate Studies.

-The folks at Imladris Farm need your help:

A couple of years ago, Whole Foods changed us from “direct store delivery” (i.e. – we took in orders from individual stores and shipped jam directly to them) to a distributor. We had some concerns about the process, but this wasn’t a voluntary move. Over the next 18 months, the distributor proceeded to lose orders, forget deliveries, and generally cause chaos for us and many other small and local/regional vendors. Orders remained unfilled for months, invoices weren’t paid, etc, etc. The situation has now resolved – the distributor is out of business, we were able to, with some sound and fury, collect on all our invoices, and we’re now back to direct store delivery. What we have lost, though, is much more critical to our success as a business than those invoices. Grocery buyers across the southeast, tired of looking at empty shelf spaces, ordered other product to fill those holes. When the situation resolved, we were able to reclaim the two Asheville stores, Durham, and Raleigh (Wade Ave). In other locations, their buying habits changed, and now we need to change them back.

This is where you come in. I have been in contact with managers in each store across our region. I have made it clear that we want their business…but they get phone calls from salespeople multiple times per day, making that same thing clear. The voice they listen to is yours. My experience is that it generally takes only one customer request to change a grocery buyers orders. If you’re an Imladris fan, if you shop at Whole Foods, if you live near a southeastern Whole Foods (that’d be NC, SC, GA, TN, AL, MS), please stop in and ask for your grocery buyer. Let them know that this is a product that you’d like to see back on their shelves. We are still in their computer system, still available to each store…we just need them to push the button.

As always, thanks so much for your support. We literally could not do this without you.

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

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2 Comments

  1. Ron September 20, 2017

    Re Doc Chey’s…

    Taking the numbers in their listing and their statement in the Comments “Lease rate base on 8% of Doc Chey’s gross sales while only open 5 days a week.” …

    $53.82/sf * 2527sf = $136K/year. Divide that by 8% and you get $1.7M annual gross sales. That’s a lot of noodles.

    Reply
    1. Kevin September 21, 2017

      So to expand on this, they are open 5 days/week = 254 days/yr
      $1.7m/254days = $6,700 in gross sales each day they are open

      That really doesn’t sound like a lot when you factor in overhead.

      Reply

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