Brewbound Podcast: Highland Brewing’s Leah Wong Ashburn on Asheville’s Recovery in the Aftermath of Hurricane Helene

[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: Heading to CBC? Kick things off the day before at Brewbound's meetup at Love City Brewing in Philly, Sunday, April 19th from 5 to 7 p.m. Connect with beer industry leaders, grab a drink, and catch up with the Brewbound team. It's free to attend and walking distance from the convention center. Head to Brewbound.com slash lovecity.rsvp. And don't forget to catch the Brewbound team at booth 956 during CBC. Next on the Brewbound Podcast, Leah Wong Ashburn provides an update on the relief efforts in Asheville. Hello and welcome to the Brewbound Podcast. I'm Justin Kendall.

[00:00:50] Jessica Infante: And I'm Jessica Infante. And we don't have Zoe Licata with us today.

[00:00:55] Justin Kendall: I know. We are Zoe-free this week. She is at the Beer Institute's annual meeting in New York City, which they had on election day. So weird to me.

[00:01:05] Jessica Infante: But to their credit, every time they sent out an email promoting the event, they told everybody to get their absentee ballot.

[00:01:13] Justin Kendall: Get those early votes in. And by the time you hear this, the election might be over. might, who knows?

[00:01:20] Jessica Infante: I would like to speak to the manager of the calendar that put this, the Halloween and daylight saving all in the same, what, five day period?

[00:01:30] Justin Kendall: It's quite a wallop, especially if you have a small human being who likes schedules and doesn't like change.

[00:01:37] Jessica Infante: I think that's pretty much all of them. All the small human beings.

[00:01:42] Justin Kendall: Yeah. It's been a rough go and I'm sure you've had the same.

[00:01:47] Jessica Infante: Yeah, you know, we're surviving thanks to caffeine. It's been a big help. Doing okay.

[00:01:54] Justin Kendall: I'm only on three coffees today. We'll see how many more we need to get through it.

[00:01:59] Jessica Infante: My local Starbucks has not yet run out of the apple crisp syrup for the apple crisp oat milk ice shake and espresso, which has been very exciting for me.

[00:02:09] Justin Kendall: Well, I'm always up for a PSL. So before we get our Starbucks orders in, this week we are going to be speaking with Leah Wong Ashburn, the owner of Highland Brewing in Asheville, North Carolina. She's going to tell us all about the relief efforts the craft brewery is doing in the wake of Hurricane Helene. So stay tuned for that. Lots of great insights. That was a conversation Jess and Justin had with Leah.

[00:02:34] Jessica Infante: Yeah, for as absolutely horrendous as a situation as they have down there in North Carolina, it was actually a really like, I think, uplifting conversation. It was really nice to hear from somebody who's doing the absolute best and most that they can under terrible circumstances and still is able to remain pretty upbeat and positive about it. So I really like chatting with Leah and I think you're going to like the conversation.

[00:02:58] Justin Kendall: I would agree. We also have a lot of conversations coming up for Brewbound Live. That's December 11th and 12th in Marina Del Rey, California. Get your tickets now. Just announced, Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head co-founder, is going to be doing a fireside chat with me. So yeah, with me, and we're going to talk about 30 years of Dogfish Head, the state of the industry, how craft can get back to some vibrance and why that's important.

[00:03:29] Jessica Infante: Yeah, that's going to be a great chat. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm also very excited to not have to be part of it so I can just watch. I'll give you the highlights when you're done.

[00:03:38] Justin Kendall: I mean, as much as we all love stage time, like once you've cleared your set of conversations and you can just cruise into the end of the day, it's always a nice feeling.

[00:03:50] Jessica Infante: I would say I look forward to that, but I think I have two in the afternoon on the very last day.

[00:03:57] Justin Kendall: Well, you can check out the full schedule now at Brewbound.com, get your tickets and so many details out there, so many speakers. I'm sure we've beaten you all over the head with it so far. So we'll spare you on the podcast. Just go check it out. And I don't think you'll be disappointed.

[00:04:15] Jessica Infante: No, awesome lineup this year.

[00:04:17] Justin Kendall: Let's get into some news. And while Zoe was at the Beer Institute meeting, you were at the Massachusetts Brewers Guild's annual meeting or fall meeting.

[00:04:26] Jessica Infante: Annual meeting.

[00:04:27] Justin Kendall: Yeah, but always in the fall. How are the vibes?

[00:04:31] Jessica Infante: All of the vibes were, well, people seemed really excited to be together, collegial, friendly, happy hour was a great time. I think Massachusetts, like anywhere else, is going through some challenges, perhaps a little more than anywhere else. My hunch is that a lot of craft breweries in these higher cost of living areas are having a kind of a tough time as everything is so much more expensive. You know, we've seen a couple closures. We've also seen quite a few mergers. That's been like the theme of Massachusetts Craft Beer this year, I would say.

[00:05:07] Justin Kendall: Did we make it through the meeting without an acquisition going down?

[00:05:14] Jessica Infante: You, sir, are asking quite an interesting question. We'll find out.

[00:05:19] Justin Kendall: We will find out. Yes. You'll want to stay tuned to Brewbound.com.

[00:05:24] Jessica Infante: Yeah, one interesting tidbit that I took away from the business track, which was the seminars that I sat in on, was Chris Farmand, the founder of Small Batch Standard, which is like a financial business sense consulting group specializing in the craft industry. He's working with a lot of his clients to help them drive more profit. They've got a client in the Pac Northwest that they convinced to add chicken tenders to their menu And he estimates that that's going to drive a million dollars in top line revenue this year. Chicken fingers.

[00:05:57] Justin Kendall: I love that. I love that stat. And as someone whose dinner companion often chooses chicken fingers when we go out, which is not very often, I think he's spot on.

[00:06:11] Jessica Infante: Right. He said it's a universal food. It's like, not wrong. Yeah. I do the, you know, the Kirkland brand Costco lightly breaded chunks for dinner way more often than an adult should.

[00:06:22] Justin Kendall: There is an obscene amount of dinosaur nuggets that are produced and consumed within this house. Nice. Nice.

[00:06:33] Jessica Infante: So yeah, that's one takeaway. I'll try to sprinkle some of these in throughout the week. But overall, great time. Nice to see a lot of familiar faces. And I just, I always love that event because it's right here. So no excuse not to go. And Katie Stinchin, the Guild Director, is a wonderful human being.

[00:06:51] Justin Kendall: Look out for all those tidbits in the upcoming Brewbound newsletters this week and probably next week, maybe two. We'll see how things go. But let's talk about another acquisition that went down and that's Backpocket Brewing in my neck of the woods of Iowa is acquiring Peacetree, which was a brand that was up for sale in 2023 and ended up closing in June of this year. And it was, I believe I was first woman founded brewery, so. They had looked for somebody to sort of shepherd the brand and they have found them in back pocket. They're going to relaunch with Blonde Fatale in the Des Moines area to start, and then follow that up with some other releases in 2025. But that's really sort of the nuts and bolts of this deal is an IP acquisition to keep the brand alive, keep sort of this tradition that Megan McKay had started. Cool.

[00:07:54] Jessica Infante: And what happens with their taproom?

[00:07:56] Justin Kendall: They have gone away. I think one of the challenges is when you open a brewery in a small town, it's hard to get a like-minded person to invest in that brewery. Like Knoxville in Iowa is not a huge town. And they had an East Village, Des Moines taproom location, satellite outpost, but those have all closed since. So yeah, those, those will be going away.

[00:08:23] Jessica Infante: Nice that the brand lives on though. And I think we'll see that happen in a lot of other deals too.

[00:08:28] Justin Kendall: Yeah. And what dovetails to this conversation is Aaron Vargas, who is the owner of Backpocket Brewing, will be on a panel at Brewbound Live discussing these strategic acquisitions, these shared service agreement alliances that have formed because Backpocket is part of something called the Parallel Brewery Collective, which are independently owned breweries that have a shared services agreement. So they share a sales team and marketing force and they do procurement together, but they remain they're independently owned. So Peacetree will become part of that collective. And that's a panel that you're going to be hosting.

[00:09:12] Jessica Infante: It is a panel that I'm going to be hosting. Looking forward to it.

[00:09:16] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Check out that story at Brewbound.com. Also this week, actually over the weekend, we found out that Revolution is closing its brew pub in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood. The brew pub had been open for 15 years. It was their first location. It's like an eternity. Yeah, kind of a heartbreaking one. But also, if you've made it 15 years in the restaurant industry, that's a really good run.

[00:09:45] Jessica Infante: Yeah, like that's absolutely nothing to sneeze at. And they're obviously going to be keeping the taproom open at their production brewery, also in Chicago.

[00:09:55] Justin Kendall: Yes, they will be keeping that open. That's a facility that they own. They also own this property and Josh Deeth told me that they will be looking to sell that Logan Square property in the new year. So that will be going away. They also will be extending severance and extended benefits to the 20 full-time employees who were affected. There are also 24 part-time employees who will be receiving severance. So, yeah, that it definitely sucks.

[00:10:30] Jessica Infante: It sucks. That's a lot of people.

[00:10:32] Justin Kendall: Yeah, it's a lot of people. Yeah. Well, we wish them all the best and hopefully they can land on their feet. But that will be closing in mid-December.

[00:10:44] Highland Brewing: This episode is brought to you by the Craft Brewers Conference, where big ideas, bold beers, and brutally honest shop talk collide. Join thousands of industry pros leveling up their game. Don't miss it. Register now at craftbrewersconference.com.

[00:11:04] Justin Kendall: Another story that we have up at Brewbound.com, Michelle McGrath is leaving the American Cider Association at the end of the year.

[00:11:12] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and it sounds like Michelle is onto a new and exciting adventure. She hasn't completely shared what that is yet, but she's been leading the ACA for over eight years and she's really been such a huge champion for CIDR. Michelle has done such an excellent job and I hope all of those producers are, you know, giving her all the flowers because she's really been a really strong advocate for just making sure that CIDR gets mentioned in the same conversations as beer and wine and spirits. And, you know, it's a different product in a different industry, but Michelle has always really done an excellent job to make sure that it gets credit and people think of it and drink it and talk about it. And she's done some phenomenal work.

[00:11:57] Justin Kendall: She really has as far as the legislative accomplishments that she's been able to do, you know, whether it's being part of the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act in 2020, or I believe there was like a standards of fill accomplishment that they had. That was huge. Yeah.

[00:12:16] Jessica Infante: Yeah, that basically opened up a whole new packaging avenue for so many producers that they were able to start canning. Really a big deal. Personally, Michelle also was the first person I ever interviewed for the Brewman podcast way back in early 2020. I went to CiderCon, I brought our recording equipment with me. It was an adventure. That's awesome. And I was like super nervous because I was brand new and never done this before. And she was so gracious and a wonderful first interview.

[00:12:48] Justin Kendall: Best of luck to her. It's always a bummer to see somebody possibly leave the industry. We don't know where she's going, but, you know, best of luck to her on the next adventure.

[00:12:59] Jessica Infante: Yes. And Michelle, don't be a stranger. I know you're listening.

[00:13:02] Justin Kendall: With that, let's get into our featured interview with Leah Wong Ashburn, the owner of Highland Brewing in Asheville, North Carolina. But first, Jess, we should call out the work that Leah's dad did.

[00:13:16] Jessica Infante: Yeah. So Highland is the oldest brewery in Asheville. And if you know craft beer today, you know that Asheville, North Carolina is a huge hub for craft breweries and all that. And Highland has been there since 1994, which is Again, if 15 years was an eternity for Revs Brewpub, this is even longer. They were founded in 1994 by Leah's dad, Oscar Wong. He's a Chinese Jamaican immigrant and he was a retired engineer. The family had moved from New Jersey to North Carolina. And Leah just, like, she had so many wonderful things to say about her dad, particularly what drew him to Asheville. He really loved the community that really seemed to value, like, makers and doers and artists and handcrafted a lot of like farm to table stuff before that was cool. So that was really what attracted him to the area. And then he opened this brewery that really started a Revolution Brewing Western North Carolina. I'm on their website right now and they've written that, little did he know, Oscar laid the foundation for a robust brewing community that would grow to over 35 breweries within city limits. So Oscar really did a whole lot. He has since retired, though he does still hold the titles of Vice President and Chief Schmoozer, which is adorable. And Oscar actually was honored by the Brewers Association in 2020 for their, it's not quite the Lifetime Achievement Award, that's not what they call it, but that. And Leah said the whole family was so grateful, but they were slightly bummed that it was not a year at which CBC was happening. So there wasn't like a big in-person gathering. We are happy to shout out Oscar here and really acknowledge everything he's done for Kraft, which is really a whole lot. And, you know, now they're on the second generation of the family. Leah is the CEO. She joined the company in 2011 in a sales position, promoted to president in 2015. And now she's running the show and doing a lot. And as we said at the beginning, she's somebody who's currently, you know, living through extraordinary times, but doing it with a smile on her face.

[00:15:24] Justin Kendall: Yeah, she's doing the work and it shows. So very excited to share this interview. So let's get into it.

[00:15:33] Jessica Infante: More than a month ago, Hurricane Helene gained stream over the Gulf of Mexico and waged a 500 mile path of utter destruction over the Southeastern United States. Few places were hit harder than Western North Carolina, which is home to Asheville, one of our country's great craft beer cities. Here with us today is Leah Wong Ashburn, CEO and family owner of Highland Brewing, the oldest brewery in Asheville. Leah, I'm so grateful that you have the time for us and I know how busy you are. But before we dive into all the ways the Highland has stepped up to support the community, which are many, please tell us how you and your team and the GOATs are all doing.

[00:16:10] Leah Wong: We're doing better. It was a huge shock and a lot of worry, like lack of safety, power, water, food, money at first, those first few days, but so much improvement since then, and now just working toward getting potable water Highland Brewing. So we wanna get back in business.

[00:16:33] Justin Kendall: So what is the current status of production at Highland?

[00:16:38] Leah Wong: We haven't brewed since before the storm, so we're edging up on what, five or six weeks. So that's, that's really painful. And in the meantime, though, we are so much more fortunate than most and painfully aware that a handful of breweries no longer exist. We were lucky in that it's hard to say lucky, but one of our teammates lost her home. But relatively speaking, that's pretty good. It's so hard to say that because she is understandably broken. We're trying to provide her some support. It's so easy to get off topic because we've all been so deeply traumatized over the past month. but we're open on site and trying to get back to operations. Having people here has been great, but 95, 96% of our beer is distributed. So we've got to fill some holes there for sure.

[00:17:34] Jessica Infante: So Highland's been marshaling supplies and you've given over part of the sprawling campus to nearly 10 relief groups, which is amazing. They're all running operations from the brewery. How's that going? And why was it important for you to do?

[00:17:47] Leah Wong: Yeah, it's, it's been a really great experience there been a kind of nine groups so six relief groups, a cidery, a neighborhood, and an outdoor zoo that we have hosted in some way, or helps with access to our property. And I think the kind of secret behind that the inspiration behind it is that we've we've always had a purpose beyond beer. I mean, animals and people all operate better when they have a purpose. And our highest purpose became serving the community. as soon as this happened and as soon as we figured out that we had things that other people and other organizations needed, especially relief organizations because they can affect so many people aren't built to do that. So if we had the one thing, whether it was, and it was all of these things, it was people with skills, it was forklifts, it was space, and then it became cold space when the power came back. So we kind of piece these things out and just totally clear what the right thing was to do. And thankfully we're entering a longer partnership with one of the organizations now that's going to rent space from us. So that's really cool.

[00:19:02] Jessica Infante: It's great to hear that, you know, something positive and productive is coming from us. That's, that's awesome.

[00:19:08] Leah Wong: Yeah, just a bunch of people that have like, you know, connections made that wouldn't normally be made and people talking to each other and helping each other that wouldn't have normally. So that I mean, that's a bright spot. You got to find those things.

[00:19:21] Jessica Infante: For sure. So you mentioned you haven't brewed since when do you think you might be able to get back to doing like, quote unquote, normal brewery things?

[00:19:30] Leah Wong: Well, it won't be normal for a while, but the amazing news is that we are going to brew on Sunday. What is that? November 3rd will be our first brew back. So like huge celebration. So excited about that. It's coming about because we still can't brew with the water from the city. That's going to be another several weeks. We have had tankers rotating in and out, which is a huge cost. The gentleman we're working with agreed to basically triple our supply of water. It's triple the cost, but if we stay in business, that is definitely worth it. Brewing Sunday, and that's going to be a small 100 barrels, and then we will prop up some yeast and then order yeasts. to kind of build up that brewing capacity. We have to actually balance that out with the tanks that we're keeping water in because we'll get a tanker and just put it in a tank to send that empty tanker back and just build up these stores of water. So that's a new dance that we have to do. But the cool part about that is another reason we can brew on Sunday is that two of our guys ran down to Sierra Nevada today and they gave us some Cali yeast. How cool is that? So they just ran down the road about 30 minutes, build up a couple of barrels, and we're going to use that to make Cold Mountain, one of our most famous beers. And we're still having that party next week. I don't know if that'll be next week by the time this airs, but our party for Cold Mountain is November eight through 10. So we still need to brew some of that and package some of that. So we will get to do that with Sierra Nevada yeast and then buy the other yeasts because we lost our deep freezer. But one step at a time, also as fast as we can.

[00:21:23] Justin Kendall: I was going to ask you what the first barrier was that you were going to come back with. You know, you laid out that there are so many different things going on that it's easy to get off track. And I guess when you're in a situation like this, how do you even determine what are the first steps to getting back? Like, how do you even walk through the process of, all right, this is what we have to do to move forward?

[00:21:48] Leah Wong: Right. I borrowed a couple of concepts from a consultant that we worked with, who I also like to call a friend. And when he worked with us, he talked about stabilizing and then strengthening. So I use those words with our team. First, we had to find everybody, you know, like, is everybody okay? Are you physically safe? Are your families okay? Do you have a home? And then it was, do you have food? How do we get you water? So all of those kind of like life safety things happened first. And I will never forget having a printed paper list in front of me the first three or four days. And one by one, we checked off people as accounted for. And like when you get down to those last few and it's been days, the stress level is just indescribable. And then checking off that last box and we found that person was I mean all of us just like shouted and we didn't know that we were We hadn't talked about how, how that felt because we didn't want to, but there was definitely like arms in the air and such relief at that point. Once you have those things taken care of, and once you have like heroes, like my friend Christian Crute, he filled up a van of supplies and my two friends, Mike and Wayne drove it up here. And that was the first supplies that we got. And it just seemed to multiply as we unloaded the van and filled up the back wall of our packaging hall because we weren't packaging. We had kids riding around on a hand truck, and we had the grill going to feed our staff, and we had these supplies that just started filling the walls for people, for pets, for babies. That kind of support and thoughtfulness, there were five-gallon containers of water. Just not having those basics was terrifying. We moved on from that and got the leadership team together and started talking about what we do first and really, We couldn't do anything without water or power. So it became all of these community efforts and what space do we have and who can work? How do we keep the most people employed?

[00:24:07] Jessica Infante: Certainly a huge, huge team effort. One thing I know that you have been going through and navigating to very complicated and you kind of have it down a little bit is insurance. So what have you learned so far and what do fellow brewers need to know? Because I'm sure there are people who absolutely need to hear this stuff.

[00:24:26] Leah Wong: Yeah, I thank you for bringing that up, Jess. I have learned more about insurance. I mean, it's like, you know, you have those sessions at CBC and it's like, oh my god, you're gonna be bored to tears and you might force yourself. but I would implore all brewers to look at their insurance policies because you're not as well insured as you think you are. We have something called business interruption insurance, and it does not cover anything in a lot of different instances. And these instances can come up, like if it's because of a flood or if your utilities are out for more than three or four days, it doesn't cover it. So we thought business interruption, it's really not that. It's business interruption in a couple of cases. So that, and you should have replacement value put on your products. So if you don't have that, it might replace what it costs for the raw ingredients. But if you have replacement value, it will cover the cost of it at retail. So if you're selling for $12 a six pack, that's what it will replace for even if the liquid was in the tank. So, look at all of those and still there's going to be a hundred reasons why insurance won't cover what's in the tank because whatever it is, I mean, the exceptions become really too many to count. So, just having flood insurance, really not good enough. Just having insurance and feeling like you're well covered, Probably not good enough and worth diving into a few of the details to find out what you might get in certain situations. Not that there was any likelihood of this where we live. This was like a thousand year flood. But just learn more so that you can be a little bit better prepared.

[00:26:15] Justin Kendall: Does this make it more challenging to get insurance in the future?

[00:26:21] Leah Wong: That's a good question, Justin. I'm not sure about that. And we're all trying so hard to figure out if we can just get something from the insurance that we've been paying for for years. And it's really the industry is becoming like the issue that I see. And I cannot rewrite the industry in this instance. Like I don't have it in me to do, but that's what I feel needs to be done.

[00:26:47] Justin Kendall: That's just so overwhelming.

[00:26:49] Leah Wong: Yeah, it's too much. I mean, there's so much at stake. And then there again, there's there are others who are far worse off. And few people have even heard back from their insurance companies. I don't know, Jesse probably had a hard time with your family back at Sandy. Like how long did that take? You know?

[00:27:04] Jessica Infante: Unfortunately, my mom had been basically playing phone tag with a flood insurance company to get out and see the house before the storm hit. So we'd actually didn't have flood insurance because it had been, it was, you know, our old bungalow. My grandfather and his brother built it with their own hands, you know, in the 60s. And then, you know, when my dad passed, we made the decision to make the tiny beach house the primary residence. And so my mom was getting ready to move down there. And then the storm happened, you know, so it was just like a nightmare. But, you know, like you and I had talked about this on email a little bit, it being her primary made it a little bit easier to get things moving faster. And she, we were like some of the first people back in our neighborhood and she didn't move until June of 2014. And the storm was October of 2012. So it takes So long.

[00:27:56] Leah Wong: Yeah, it does take so long to rebuild and I'm very grateful that we were undamaged. We're up on a hill here, but that's in stark difference to some other breweries and we're trying to put together some kind of collective and sell beer from any breweries that have beer to sell but don't have a tap room open. If we can pull that together, I know there are breweries who are interested and we just have to figure out some logistics and make sure it's all legal to do that together. in our downtown taproom.

[00:28:27] Jessica Infante: That would be great because I'm sure there's plenty of people who have, like you said, beer and no taproom or a taproom and no beer. So it sounds like the community really needs to pull together. And I think you're absolutely doing that. What does the rest of the craft beer industry need to know about the current conditions in Western North Carolina? And what could they do to help?

[00:28:47] Leah Wong: Yeah, thank you for that. I would say that the first thing is that Asheville especially is open. We don't have potable water right now, but I mean typically when you go to a hotel, you're going to get bottled water anyway. They usually hand it to you, have it in the room and such, so if you can make that little adjustment, like please come visit. There are pockets that are completely inaccessible. There are also plenty of areas that are completely open for business, and we need business. We just missed our biggest month. All of the leaf viewing season is just about over now, so we missed our biggest month of that, and a lot of businesses rely on that for their survival. It's certainly important to everybody in the area. So having missed that, we need a lot of help. And buying beer in the market, doing your Christmas shopping, whether online or here, if you can visit, those are really helpful things that people can do.

[00:29:46] Justin Kendall: You're brewing your first beer this Sunday, and you're working on the model at this point. How does the business model change from on-off mix for you going forward?

[00:29:58] Leah Wong: Yeah, you know, we've seen so many changes because of the pandemic when we had to flex and pivot and do all those things that we hate, but are necessary. So, you know, doing that again, we're open onsite, we lost everything in October at the brewery, but our November events are back on and onward from there. So leaning into onsite while we haven't been able to brew, because we opened about two weeks ago, And that's gone really well. I mean, having the viewing party for Concert for Carolina was amazing. I mean, it was elbow to elbow in the taproom. And our volleyball courts are full. The disc golfers are back. People are in the meadow. They really want to listen to live music Amanda Huang out and be together. So, like, people have given us so much gratitude for us being open and giving them a place to go and do something that feels normal. I've loved hearing that I've loved seeing it happen. And we even had it last night. So last night was Halloween. And we had this like fun 80s party and everybody shows up in costume. And it was great. I mean, you can show up in costume in Asheville on any night. It's kind of okay.

[00:31:09] Jessica Infante: But isn't it so wild to watch one of those like giant televised relief concerts and know that it's like, for you, basically, it's so weird.

[00:31:21] Leah Wong: That was so I got to go.

[00:31:23] Jessica Infante: Oh, was it?

[00:31:25] Leah Wong: It was unbelievable. It was teary and happy and and the size of it was just unbelievable. So I mean, I saw that live and there is a guitar that Luke Combs owns that has a highland sticker on it. from way back in the day. Wow. Cause he is from right down the road and his assistant worked at Highland for a short time. So I got in touch with him and we were able to drink a Highland beer at the event in Charlotte, which was magical, you know, at 20 bucks per beer, but whatever. So it was seeing all that love for Western North Carolina, everybody, Phil in the stadium, the generosity of Luke Combs, Eric Church, all the other performers. I guess David Tepper and his family donated the arena for the night. And the technical organization, sound, everything, it just was mind-blowing. So $24.5 million later and counting, so glad that several organizations will benefit from that effort.

[00:32:31] Jessica Infante: That's great. How was James Taylor? I love him.

[00:32:34] Leah Wong: I love James Taylor. I went to Carolina, so that was magical. I'd never seen him live.

[00:32:39] Jessica Infante: Really? Yeah. He's the best. That was like our thing to do as a family was go see James Taylor and Bruce Springsteen whenever they came around.

[00:32:46] Leah Wong: Oh, that's fantastic.

[00:32:48] Jessica Infante: So I know we only have a couple minutes, but I just thought of something that we haven't really touched on yet. You guys are operating in basically an area that's been completely destroyed. What is life like for your distributor right now? Are trucks getting around? What's going on there?

[00:33:04] Leah Wong: Yeah, it's tough. It's like you have these extremes. So in the mountains, a flood here is different from in a flat area. The floods end up being raging fast water that moves things. So the distributor, Skyland, they do a really good job, they do a great job, but in this time, they've had some of their staff heavily impacted. And so we've joined up together, like that's just what we do. So I was out at an Ingalls Reset the other day at our leading grocery store in the market. And our VP's been there and several of our staff signed up because tap room wasn't open, we're not brewing, and we were like, hey, Skylynn, do you need some help? So we went out and did resets with them for about a week and a half. They've either got areas they can go to and it feels great or they can't get there at all, and they've lost a bunch of accounts permanently. That's really sad to see a lot of those businesses go away. Part of the magic of Western North Carolina and Asheville in particular is the independent businesses. Small and independent, Highland Brewing, also a million other businesses from artists and musicians and makers of all kinds. So to retain that magic, we need them to be supported, come back, and I hope everybody will remember what kind of connection they have to this place, because so many people do. So many people know it's special and hope they'll support.

[00:34:33] Jessica Infante: That is a perfect dovetail to what I wanted to ask you next. Asheville's craft scene grew up all around Highland. You're the first. So what makes craft beer in Asheville so special?

[00:34:44] Leah Wong: I believe it goes back to that maker culture and you know the the Scots-Irish that went into the mountains and decided hey this looks like home and stayed here. You know anybody that's going to stay in this kind of geography is independent and resilient and strong and It makes it really hard to find everyone in the midst of a tragedy, but that strong independent spirit and a maker spirit, that's so deeply ingrained in where we live. and that fits perfectly with craft beer. Like we are making this thing and it's natural ingredients and you can see the equipment and meet the people and come to this place where it all happens. So that was really what he saw along with an appreciation for good food and wine. It was back in 1994 when he opened so he'd been around the city for a couple years as a visitor looking around and recognized that there were two Wine Spectator Awards in a tiny city with like hardly any restaurants. And he thought, you know what, there must be an appreciation for really good things, no matter what they are. So food and bevs go along really well. And good Lord, this city has just blown up in food and beverage.

[00:36:05] Jessica Infante: Amazing. Well, Leah, we know you're so busy right now. So we really appreciate the time you took to join us. And I have loved having this conversation with you. It's inspiring to hear from people who are going through a tough time, but are holding it together and looking forward to being leaders. So thank you for that.

[00:36:22] Leah Wong: Thank you guys. It's a pleasure to be on. And thanks for telling our story.

[00:36:25] Jessica Infante: Of course, of course. Hopefully we can get together for a beer under happier circumstances very soon.

[00:36:30] Justin Kendall: I'd love it. Come on out. And that's our show for this week. Thanks to Leah Wong Ashburn for joining us and telling us all about what's going on in Asheville. Thanks to Jess and Zoe for all they do. Thanks to our AV team, Joe, Josh, Ryan, and everyone behind the scenes. And thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week.