Asheville Local Lab

Goals & Objectives

The Asheville Local Lab Learn Phase brought together the food and beverage manufacturing sector to define strategies to overcome challenges while starting, scaling, and sustaining food and beverage product businesses in the Western NC region. The central question of this project was: How can a post-disaster region sustainably grow its local food and beverage production ecosystem in alignment with community values?

Through a series of participatory research and ecosystem-building activities, contributors explored topics ranging from technical manufacturing expertise and infrastructure, to capital and distribution. The goal of the project was to develop a set of community-vetted priorities for the region to strengthen this sector.

Local Lead

Smithson Mills | Independent Consultant

Working Group

Jessika Bond | Land of Sky Regional Council

Michael McDonald | CAFE & Blue Ridge Food Ventures

Amy Murashige | Sugar & Snow Gelato

Krista Stearns | Asheville Area Food Guild

Kym Verhovshek | NCInnovation

Key Contributors

Noah Wilson and Leah Smith | Mountain BizWorks

From July 2025 through January 2026, Mechanism led a community engagement process to gather and synthesize input from diverse stakeholders. This process included:

• Interviews and group discussions to gather insights from food and beverage manufacturers and their supporters. 66 participants from 57 businesses and organizations participated, representing 9 stakeholder groups.
• A 3-part learning series to bring in national leaders to inform the work in the region
• An in-person event to workshop and develop ideas for strategies and solutions. 50 attendees participated, representing 9 stakeholder groups.

These activities were complemented by a review of supporting research studies and regular contributions by the Local Lead and Working Group.

After a thorough synthesis and further community feedback, Mechanism created a set of community-prioritized actionable recommendations the region can implement to strengthen this important sector.

Local Labs make visible the challenges and opportunities for starting, scaling, and sustaining production ecosystems. Our process allows business owners and workers to work with and alongside each other and a wide variety of industry, intermediary, and community stakeholders, inclusive of a wide variety of identities (age, citizenship, race, gender, employment status, etc). The Local Lab process intentionally brings them all together to better understand and envision the collective benefits and impacts local production can have on a place. Successful Labs co-create, co-design, and build new resources, services, systems, and policies that better support production ecosystems, leading to more thriving and resilient workers, businesses, communities, and places.

Local Labs have three phases: Learn, Design, and Build.