Just five days after the storm, Bridge & Tunnel Coffee’s famous Yellow Truck headed out into the community hoping to resume business as usual. Owner Greg Fulcher and co-owner and Head Chef Bobby Nagelberg quickly found that the city’s needs had drastically changed.
With A-B Tech’s campus temporarily closed due to the water crisis, the café’s brick-and-mortar space in Coman Center lost its regular base of student and staff customers. And their usual food truck business a mix of local farmers’ markets and eateries- halted as the area struggled to recover. Pivoting to come up with another income stream, the cafe began accepting donations through its website. These donations, first used to pay café employees, soon became a way to give back to the community at large as Bridge & Tunnel began serving free coffee and food to area first responders.
The café also began serving local roasters by offering up a “storefront” for small businesses who lost their facilities or their wholesale accounts as a result of the storm. Bridge & Tunnel allowed these roasters to sell their products in the Yellow Truck and reap 100% of the profit.
Fulcher took the time to share exciting stories about the café’s work in the community.
Q: Tell us a little bit about the truck’s history.
I designed and built the truck during a particularly bad fire season in California [where I lived at the time], when power would be shut off for many days at a time. Add to that rigid Covid restrictions, and the truck was often the only coffee/espresso shop in town (in a San Francisco suburb). Its design allows it to run off the grid indefinitely, so long as there’s drinking water, coffee beans, and enough gasoline to keep the hybrid battery/generator system powered up…
Q: Where has your truck been stationed since the hurricane?
A longstanding, symbiotic relationship with Cecilia’s Kitchen on Merrimon Ave in North Asheville allowed for a plan to quickly come together. Bridge & Tunnel was able to provide water to Cecilia to keep her food trucks operating - while satisfying the health department - and a new collaboration was born.
In addition to [being stationed at farmers’] markets and Cecilia’s, both the truck and van have been very busy in the community, serving “hugs in mugs” to schools, medical staff, donation sites, and businesses.
Now, over a month later [our truck] continues to be a daily fixture at Cecilia’s Kitchen, alongside her food truck and restaurant. For the first few weeks after the storm, [Cecilia’s Kitchen was the only place to find] breakfast, lunch, and coffee in town, and people flocked there to enjoy a little bit of normalcy, connect with new and old friends and neighbors….
Q: How did you make the transition between selling coffee to your usual customers and serving free coffee to first responders and other helpers?
At first, considering the collective state of shock we were experiencing, the truck operated as it had before the storm, and generous tips ensured we could continue paying staff a certified living wage… As soon as there was some connectivity available, we reached out to our network of friends, family, and the coffee community, to ask for donations to help us balance commerce and charity. In order for the latter to happen, the former needed support - that’s the simple truth.
The response was overwhelming: We received a grant from the Episcopal Disaster Relief fund which enabled the business to function and serve free meals, and donations large & small from near and far to continue to “pay it forward”.
[Our café] was repurposed — as it should have been — to a Red Cross and AmeriCorps headquarters supporting the shelters on campus and the community at large. Early on, we received donated [food and] funds [from friends and family]. Eggs, cheese, rolls, potatoes, beans, all of the fixings for a proper breakfast sandwich or burrito bowl, to make hot breakfasts for the volunteers coming in from all over the country.
We did this until the Health Department said we couldn’t, and then maybe we continued a bit longer. We are disrupters, after all, and because we had a safe water source and rock-solid sanitation protocols for the cafe and our truck, we felt it more important to feed volunteers than follow the rules…
Over the course of the two weeks, the café was open on campus, we served about 2,000 emergency meals.
Q: Do you have any estimate of how much you've raised in donations?
We haven’t had a moment to calculate exactly how much we have raised, as it seems we’re working 8 days a week! Our approach was a bit different than many who used the GoFundMe platform, which we feel is not as effective as a direct appeal, in person. It helps when someone considering a donation is able to come to the truck and see the plan in action. A customer who contributed $20.00 to the truck effectively provided drinks to those behind them. The donations via our webpage, at Bridge & Tunnel Coffee Co., have slowed considerably. We'll keep going with our plan for as long as we can.
Q: Are you back to selling coffee again, or still raising money through donations?
We never stopped selling beverages, actually. Those sales keep the business going, which in turn allows us to use donations for their intended purpose. So long as that happens, we will continue to serve free drinks to responders and volunteers.
There are less responders coming to the trucks right now, so we have been bringing the van directly to them, including NanoStead in Marshall (which is the volunteer headquarters), Beloved Asheville, Bounty & Soul in Black Mountain, public schools, and one of our favorites; randomly dropping in at fire stations and volunteer sites and opening up the entire menu to whoever happens to be there.
Q: What has been especially rewarding or surprising about this experience for you?
…It’s inspiring to see how the small business community has been able to pivot and adapt. New alliances are the real story here. We are stronger together…
It took a few weeks to figure out that serving coffee as we do, with compassion and love, was important. Many tears were shed, long, tight hugs given, and cups of normalcy served. It’s the simple things, really, and a warm espresso drink has a way of creating community.
Another thing worth mentioning is how so many responders from outside our region took time to comment on how tight, friendly, and well-equipped our community was. Many of them had never experienced anything like what we have here. They shared that despite the destruction and loss, they knew in their heart that the collective ‘we' was going to be OK.