Asheville Tea Company perseveres one year after Tropical Storm Helene

Tropical Storm Helene destroyed the Asheville Tea Company’s facility nearly one year ago.
A Canadian tea company is assisting with manufacturing and packaging until new equipment can be acquired.
Despite significant financial losses and operational challenges, the company has relaunched and is rebuilding.

ASHEVILLE – Nearly one year ago, Asheville Tea Company’s original tea blends were scattered along the Swannanoa River and Thompson Street, where the small business had been headquartered until Tropical Storm Helene wiped out the facility.

It could have been the end of the woman-founded and operated family business, which launched in 2016 and has since expanded its distribution across the Southeast and nationwide.

The same storm system ended many dreams, making Asheville Tea Company’s recovery that much more remarkable, even with there being so much more to do before the tea manufacturer is fully operational and self-sustaining.

“Generating resiliency and tenacity in order to keep a business going beyond the initial idea phase and a couple of years requires a deep connection to the purpose behind your business. That’s something that’s driven me to continue to do this work because I feel so strongly there’s work to be done,” said Jessie Dean, founder and CEO of Asheville Tea Company.

Jessie Dean said she developed Asheville Tea Company to support small farmers and redefine how tea is sourced and enjoyed.

Rebuilding after Helene has come with many difficulties, and new challenges keep raining down on the small business, which has impacted its ability to hit sales goals and slowed its progression.

One year after Helene, Asheville Tea Company occupies a temporary headquarters at Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College’s Small Business Center at the Enka-Candler campus. Boxes of tea stacked high on shelves await distribution to regional wholesale retailers and online customers nationwide.

Operations are more complex and costly as Asheville Tea Company sends bulk shipments of tea, which include locally sourced herbs and floral ingredients, to Sarjesa, Inc., a tea company in Calgary, Canada that manufactures its blends and fills the tea bags. The tea bags are then shipped back to North Carolina, where Asheville Tea Company staff packages them in retail boxes and sends them out for distribution.

“It’s not over yet, and it’s going to be a challenge for some time for a lot of small businesses to truly get back to growth,” Jessie Dean said. “We don’t just want to survive, we want to thrive.”

Table of Contents

What happened to Asheville Tea Co.?

Tropical Storm Helene pummeled Western North Carolina, arriving last September, leaving a path of death and destruction, and setting off what would be a long, grueling recovery period. The two days of heavy rainfall that preceded the storm exacerbated the situation, which resulted in the Swannanoa River cresting at a record 27.33 feet.

The same river swelled and spilled over its banks, taking out homes, businesses, and communities, including Asheville Tea Company, which was set mere feet away from the river’s banks on Thompson Street, just outside of the historic Biltmore Village.

Jessie Dean, age 44, works with her sister, Melissa Dean, age 42, who is the director of sales and marketing. After the floodwaters receded, they tracked the path of the 5,800-square-foot building, which they leased. It was lifted from its foundation and sent crashing through a utility pole, eventually embedding itself in Asaka Japanese Cuisine and scattering across Long John Silver’s parking lot. More pieces of the structure, as well as office furniture and bags of tea, were strewn along the river and left tangled high in trees.

Asset losses were estimated to be at least half a million dollars.

In addition to helping her sister pick up the pieces of the shattered business, Melissa Dean also dealt with storm-related damage at her Woodfin home, which included flooding of her finished basement and fallen trees that destroyed her deck and totaled her vehicle.

“It was overwhelming to have everything in your life that you’ve built over time, having to see it damaged and figure out ways to replace it,” Melissa Dean said.

Sisters in strength and solidarity

The Dean sisters said there was no question about whether they would rebuild the company. Thanks to the local community and friends across the U.S. and over the northern border, they were able to pivot and get back to business within several weeks of the catastrophic storm, in time for the holiday season.

Asheville Tea Co. sources botanicals from WNC farms, such as lime basil, lemon basil, chrysanthemum, lavender, chamomile, peppermint, spearmint, and native varietal mountain mint. The farm partners had ingredients on reserve for the company to restart and have continued to support with supplies.

Donations from customers and strangers who heard about the company after Helene, along with relief fund grants and loans from organizations like Mountain BizWorks, provided the necessary financial assistance to relaunch. Still, the company has taken on more debt due to the losses from Helene. The exact amount was not disclosed, but Jessie Dean reported that by the one-year milestone, funds had been acquired to nearly match the value of what was lost in the storm, but that additional funding would be required for areas including replacing equipment, maintaining payroll, rebuilding inventory and building out a new space.

The sisters said having each other and their family, friends and neighbors’ support ― which sometimes included hands-on help packing and hauling boxes ― gave them the motivation and push they needed to keep going, especially on the more difficult days.

Melissa Dean said she couldn’t imagine going through it all without her sister.

“If one of us is feeling down, the other one steps in and picks each other up,” Melissa Dean said.

Jessie Dean said that their tight-knit relationship, personally and professionally, meant having someone to help process the traumatic situation, share resources, and band together to lead recovery.

“We have the sister connection. We knew we were on the same page immediately and got to work around what we needed to do to save the business quickly,” Jessie Dean said.

Asheville Tea Company’s small staff, who began to return to work in January, has been critical to its recovery. Of the 11 original employees, seven had been retained, and one person was a new hire.

Asheville Tea Company rebuilds, bag by bag

In 2016, Asheville Tea Co. launched with the assistance of A-B Tech’s business incubator program. After Helene, the small business returned to the Enka-Candler campus to rebuild.

For nearly a year, Asheville Tea Co. has used several rooms in the incubator wing for its offices, storage, packaging and distribution. The temporary headquarters is in place until a permanent facility can be acquired, which Jessie Dean predicts will be in early 2026.

She said the facility will be in Asheville, but not near a river, saying the risks are too high.

Jessie Dean expressed gratitude for the invitation to regroup and restructure, finding it comfortable to return to the company’s original operational base for the first three years.

However, the space is far smaller than what the tea company had before, which occupied about 4,000 square feet of the 5,800 square feet on Thompson Street. It now occupies a suite estimated at 1,500 square feet at A-B Tech. And the loss of high-priced equipment has further prevented them from making their blends in-house.

However, Sarjesa, Inc., a tea company in Calgary, Canada, came on board early on to offer support to manufacture the blends and package the tea bags, allowing Asheville Tea Company to fulfill orders.

Jessie Dean said Alexandra Daignault, founder of Sarjesa, immediately reached out to offer to make the teas and told her not to be scared.

“She’s been such a source of strength to us, and stepping in right away is something that made this possible. She’s amazing,” Jessie Dean said.

Daignault said she met Jessie Dean about two years ago at a sustainable herb conference, and a friendship formed soon after. She said they made a promise to support each other if issues or challenges emerged.

Daignault said that although there had been challenges and the need to balance ever-changing rules, the two teams have worked together to navigate and resolve the issues.

“If you promise to help your friends if things go wrong, then you should do it,” Daignault told the Citizen Times in an email on Sept. 17. “Everyone benefits when there is a healthy business ecosystem. Ultimately, it’s much more fun to be in business when you have a community of other businesses working together in pursuit of a shared ‘why.’”

Jessie Dean said import tariffs, which have a 15% universal baseline, have raised prices on imported goods, like black and green teas from countries including India. Prolonged delays of inventory at the borders have impacted operations and order fulfillment schedules. She noted that shipping costs and customs brokerage fees for a service used to help navigate the system have increased with tariff fees added as line items. Inflation and tariffs have hiked up the cost of production machinery, which would be imported from Japan, delaying their timeline to replace it.

“One of the biggest challenges is that we are a company that wants to manufacture here. We want to create jobs and support economic development here in Western North Carolina, in the U.S., and yet, we don’t live in an entirely closed system,” Jessie Dean said.

The Asheville Tea Co. leaders have launched their Fall tea line, which includes Pumpkin Pie Chai and Spiced Apple Butter. They are looking forward to the holiday season, which has traditionally been the busiest for the business.

“We’re ready to get back to growth and doing the work that we love and that’s meaningful to us,” Jessie Dean said.

For more about Asheville Tea Company, visit ashevilleteacompany.com.

Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Tips, comments, questions? Email [email protected] or follow @PrincessOfPage on Instagram. Sign up for AVL Bites and Brews, our weekly food and drink newsletter here.

link