AVL Biz Weekly, Sept 2-8: Three Festivals, A Business Buyout Workshop & Mike D's Sold-Out DJ Set

Welcome to AVL BIZ Weekly—your local cheat sheet for what’s happening in Asheville’s small business + creative scenes.

Each week: hand-picked events, marketing ideas that actually work, and a little local flavor to keep things fun.

My name's Jason and I'm writing this (connect with me here).

Hey friends,

It’s Labor Day week and Asheville's running three festivals at once. Boomtown FestAVL takes over Pack Square, the Apple Festival takes over Hendersonville, and there's a Renaissance Faire out at Fort Tater if you'd rather watch archery than eat funnel cake (or you know, do both; it's fine).

On Wednesday, Hatch is hosting a panel called "Beyond the Startup" on buying an existing business instead of starting one from scratch: cooperatives, employee ownership, acquisition, the whole "what if the next business you want already exists" pitch. If you've ever thought about buying a business instead of building one, this is the event to check out.

Friday afternoon there's a Pledge 1% Service Day at The Mule, a couple hours of actual volunteering with cool people. It’s a great way to build goodwill and a network at the same time.

Let's get into it.

📋 On Deck

• Business: An AI workshop for non-coders, a $40 small-group workshop on scaling past yourself, and a give-back-and-network afternoon at The Mule.

• Fun: Three Labor Day weekend festivals: Boomtown, the Apple Festival, and a Renaissance Faire, plus a collegiate volleyball invitational and free Shakespeare under the stars.

• Music: Mike D from the Beastie Boys sold out the Peel, Acid Bath/Kylesa/Melvins turn Hellbender into a metal night, and Boomtown alone brings nine acts to Pack Square.

🙋 Want your biz featured in front of a few really smart AVL business owners? Email me for details

🗓️ Business Events

• 🗓️ Beyond the Startup: New Paths to Business Ownership - Wed, Sept 2 · 10-11 AM (Hatch) - Mountain BizWorks, NCEOC and The Industrial Commons on buying, selling and employee-owning a business instead of starting one from zero.

• 🗓️ AI as Your Velocity Engine: Entrepreneur Week Edition - Wed, Sept 2 · 5:30-8 PM (Hatch Coworking) - Free hands-on AI workshop for entrepreneurs, no coding required. Led by Ric Pratte, so you know this will be a great session.

• 🗓️ Growing Beyond Yourself: A Practical Expansion Workshop - Thu, Sept 3 · 9 AM-12 PM (19 Zillicoa St) - $40, capped at 15 people, for owners ready to expand past doing everything themselves.

• 🗓️ Give Back and Connect: Pledge 1% Service Day - Fri, Sept 4 · 3:30-5:30 PM (The Mule, 131 Sweeten Creek Rd) - An afternoon of volunteering paired with networking, open to anyone in the give-back-minded business crowd.

Hosting something cool?

📬 Hit reply and tell me what you think. Or share an event!

💡 Marketing Quickies

Three festivals in one weekend means a lot of "near me" searches from people who've never heard of your business before. Here's how to actually catch them.

Your Google Business Profile is a storefront window. Contractors and professional service businesses both treat GBP like something you set up once and forget, but it's the first thing a festival crowd sees when they search "plumber near me" or "accountant near me" mid-weekend. Update your hours for the holiday, add a couple of recent photos, and make sure your service area actually matches where these visitors are standing.

Every 5-star review is a rep working while you're at the festival too. The businesses that pull ahead aren't the ones with the best work, they're the ones who ask for the review right after the job's done and follow up if the customer doesn't leave one. Set that follow-up to fire automatically and you stop losing reviews to people just forgetting.

A missed call during a busy weekend is a lost job. Sixty-seven percent of customers call the next name on the list if you don't get back to them within the hour, and Labor Day weekend is exactly when your phone rings while you're off enjoying it. This is why Auto Call Text Back exists inside our Show Up and Follow Up System: it responds the second you miss the call, so the lead doesn't go cold before you've even seen the notification.

Local Business Spotlight

This week's spotlight is Alex and Heidi Jeffrey of Notorious Coffee in Mars Hill. If you run a local business and want to be featured, reply to this email. I'm building the list.

They Bought a Hobby. Now They Have to Make It a Business: Alex and Heidi Jeffrey of Notorious Coffee

Heidi Jeffrey had been roasting part-time for a guy named Jeff Lowe for about two years when he told her he was retiring at the end of 2025. She went home to Alex and opened with a warning. "Hear me out. Let's buy a coffee roasting business." They had been driving over to Lowe's roastery in Mars Hill since before COVID to buy five-pound bags straight from him. If nobody took it, Notorious Coffee was closing.

Lowe called it his hobby, and he meant it. He had run it mostly alone for years and was never really in it for the money. He gave the Jeffreys a fair price on the sale because what he wanted most was for the coffee to outlast him, and he was upfront about the rest of it too. "I know I need to raise prices," he told them. "I just don't want to upset anybody." The Jeffreys have spent their first year figuring out pricing that works for two people running the roastery full-time, not one person running it on the side.

Lowe roasted to a temperature schedule, rinse and repeat, and it made good coffee for years. Alex wanted to know what else was in there. He took every variable apart, origins and crack timing and single degrees of heat. He has a bean right now that he's roasted seven or eight times and still won't release because he wants it to be perfect. Heidi frames it the way Lowe used to, that roasting is like cooking, you can come at it as a science or as an art. Alex is the scientist. Heidi is the artist.

Ask Alex what you're actually paying for and he walks you through a natural process coffee like their Bali. The bean dries inside the coffee cherry instead of getting washed out first, so the fruit works its way in. You taste citrus and floral notes in a plain black cup with nothing added. It's the original way coffee was dried, and it costs more than the mechanical wash process that replaced it. "You would never see that coffee in a grocery store," he says.

The roastery is a garage in an old gas station lot in Mars Hill, and there's no sign on it. That part is deliberate. The lot has lumber stacked out front and was never built to catch walk-in traffic, so instead of dressing it up as a storefront, the Jeffreys put the hours into the roast and into getting the coffee out the door. It pours at Double D's and a few other local spots in Asheville, goes out to wholesale accounts around the region, and ships nationwide. Order online for pickup and one of them texts you back to set a time, so there's always somebody there to meet you.

They got their first date night since the baby was born not long ago and spent most of it talking about opening a cafe, probably closer to Asheville. They're not quite a year in, and it already sounds less like a someday plan and more like the next thing they're actually going to do.

Day in the Life

1. Favorite coffee or breakfast spot? Double D's, the red double decker bus on Biltmore. They pour Notorious.

2. Fitness routine? Alex teaches yoga at Asheville Community Yoga and lifts at home every two or three days so he can be around for the family. Heidi lifts and walks the baby.

3. First-time visitor to WNC? Breakfast at Yellow Mug Coffee Lounge in Weaverville, dinner at Ukiah Japanese Smokehouse downtown. Heidi sends people to Bailey Mountain Preserve in Mars Hill for the reconstructed barns and the climb up.

4. Nonprofits you support? Asheville Community Yoga, MountainTrue river cleanups, and the food bank in Asheville.

Want to work with them? Order at notoriouscoffee.com with nationwide shipping, or pick up in Mars Hill Monday and Wednesday, 11 to 1. Texting 828-484-1555 is the fastest way to reach them.

🎉 Fun Stuff Around AVL

• 🗓️ Boomtown Arts & Heritage FestAVL - Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 (Pack Square Park) - Free three-day festival, three stages, more than 30 artists, plus Asheville Symphony in the Park on Sunday.

• 🗓️ North Carolina Apple Festival - Fri-Mon, Sept 4-7 (Downtown Hendersonville) - Four days of street fair, apple everything, and the King Apple Parade closing it out Labor Day.

• 🗓️ WNC Renaissance Faire - Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 (Fort Tater, McDowell County) - Archery, artisan vendors, and full Renaissance-era theatrics about 45 minutes from Asheville.

• 🗓️ Blue Ridge Volleyball Classic - Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 (ExploreAsheville.com Arena at Harrah's Cherokee Center) - Second annual women's collegiate volleyball invitational, UNC Asheville, Western Carolina, Seton Hall, Bellarmine and Jacksonville State all playing.

• 🗓️ Romeo & Juliet - Opens Fri, Sept 4 · 7:30 PM (Hazel Robinson Amphitheatre) - Montford Park Players' free outdoor Shakespeare, this year with a vampire twist, runs weekends through Sept 26.

🎧 Bands on the Horizon

• Meltt w/ Los Eclipses, Wed, Sept 2 · 8 PM @ Grey Eagle Music Hall

• Matt Smith's Well Crafted Music Series, Wed, Sept 2 · 6 PM @ Highland Brewing (Taproom Stage)

• Mike D, Thu, Sept 3 · 8 PM @ The Orange Peel (Sold Out)

• American Aquarium, Thu, Sept 3 · 8 PM @ Grey Eagle Music Hall

• Lettuce, Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 @ Pack Square Park (Boomtown FestAVL)

• Cimafunk, Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 @ Pack Square Park (Boomtown FestAVL)

• Toubab Krewe & Friends, Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 @ Pack Square Park (Boomtown FestAVL)

• GROUNDATION, Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 @ Pack Square Park (Boomtown FestAVL)

• Golden Dawn Arkestra, Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 @ Pack Square Park (Boomtown FestAVL)

• Empire Strikes Brass, Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 @ Pack Square Park (Boomtown FestAVL)

• Jon Stickley Trio, Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 @ Pack Square Park (Boomtown FestAVL)

• Jonathan Scales Fourchestra, Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 @ Pack Square Park (Boomtown FestAVL)

• New Dawn Starkestra, Fri-Sun, Sept 4-6 @ Pack Square Park (Boomtown FestAVL)

• Acid Bath, Kylesa & Melvins, Sat, Sept 5 · 5 PM @ Hellbender by The Orange Peel

• Asheville Symphony in the Park w/ The Big Secret, Sun, Sept 6 @ Pack Square Park (Boomtown FestAVL)

• Future Aaron, Sun, Sept 6 · 5:30 PM @ Grey Eagle Patio Stage

• Asheville Jazz Orchestra Labor Day Show, Mon, Sept 7 · 2 PM @ Highland Brewing (Meadow Stage)

• ERRA w/ Vianova, Chamber & Resolve, Tue, Sept 8 · 6:30 PM @ The Orange Peel

Want your biz in front of a few really smart AVL business owners? Reply with what you're up to and we'll see if it's a fit.

Until next week,

Jason De Los Santos
Pixelated Stories Digital Marketing
(828) 585-4293