Data recently collected by the Asheville Independent Restaurants organization shows that WNC eateries contribute enormous amounts of money and time to the local community. But given the hospitality sector’s notoriously slim margins, how do these businesses manage to be so generous?
The Downtown Welcome Table is adding Sunday meals to its community offerings; Favilla’s New York Pizza is opening a North Asheville location; Pigeon Community Multicultural Development Center is hosting a fish fry fundraiser; and Mills River Farmers’ Market will operate from a new location, beginning in May.
Just over a year ago, Cúrate co-owner Liz Button introduced an initiative to bring a fine-dining experience to the city’s homeless and food insecure. Once each month since last June, Button has brought some of Asheville’s most prominent chefs into the basement kitchen of the Haywood Street Congregation’s Welcome Table program to share their cuisine with the homeless ministry’s guests. Click through for a story and slide show from August’s Welcome Table meal with The Junction and King James Public House.
