“Ugh,” Kocha said as she stepped into the cooler, sloshing in four inches of mud, surveying spilled cartons and overturned pallets, a po- tent stench filling every corner. “Can you believe?”

It was more a statement than a question because it was very much a reality. The 24,000-square-foot warehouse owned by Fletcher-based Blue Mountain Distributors was packed with nearly $1 million of local food products—from milk and chocolate to coffee and pretzels—when the rains of Hurricane Helene caused the nearby Cane Creek to swell, turning the usually docile stream into a powerful force of destruction. Now the warehouse was decimated, along with everything inside.

The warehouse of Blue Mountain Distributors after Hurricane Helene

Before the hurricane, this warehouse was a beehive of activity—a place where Western North Carolina’s commitment to local food is on full display. As a local food distributor, Blue Mountain works with dozens of regional farmers, bakers and chefs to get their products onto the shelves of everything from small food co-ops to major grocery stores and into the hands of consumers. It’s a behind-the-scenes powerhouse that allows the “buy local” movement to thrive.

When Cane Creek roared to life, on September 27, 2024, cameras mounted on the warehouse caught footage of a 12-foot wave moving up the driveway. The wall of water picked up Blue Mountain’s fleet of delivery trucks and slammed them against the side of the warehouse, creating an opening for stacks of large wooden pallets to move into the building and act like a viscous blender, causing major destruction inside.

Forklifts and pallet jacks were destroyed, computers were fried and all of the paper records were gone. Delivery trucks landed on their sides, sometimes upside down, and their headlights blinked eerily after the water got to their wiring. The food, obviously, was a total loss, soaked in water and mud and debris. By the time the storm had passed, it had created a six-foot pool of water in the warehouse that only slowly receded.

But this story isn’t just about loss and destruction. Ultimately, it’s a story about strength and resilience.

“I call them the ‘Three Ds,’” says Kocha, who co-owns Blue Mountain Distributors with her husband, Jeff Kocha. “We had devastation and depression, and now we have determination. We have more hope than darkness and we are praying over this business every day.”

The story of Blue Mountain Distributors started in 2000, when Jeff Kocha moved to Asheville from Connecticut, where he had worked as a firefighter and knew an Italian family who imported a lineup of products from their home country, including olives, pastas and sauces.

Once in Asheville, Jeff started selling the products himself, using a 14-foot trailer to ferry products down from Connecticut and offering them at a gas station market off Long Shoals Road. When customers flocked to the Italian goods, other stores noticed and asked Jeff to supply them too. One store owner asked Jeff if he could supply them with products made locally. “Before I knew it,” Jeff says, “I had a distribution business.”

Gina joined the business in 2020, in the early days of the Covid pandemic, and the duo built the business at a rapid clip, going from 35 local food brands to 120 with well over 3,500 products.

Blue Mountain Distributors stocks the shelves of local grocery stores with local foods and drinks.

Of all of the businesses that buy local products from Blue Mountain, the largest client is Ingles Markets. Founded in Asheville in 1963, Ingles is now based in nearby Black Mountain. On the shelves of Ingles, you’ll find locally roasted coffee from Pisgah Coffee Roasters and Dynamite Roasting Co., honey from Blue Ridge Apiary and meat snack sticks from Hickory Nut Gap Farm.

In the weeks following Helene, the Kochas spent weeks trying to understand the true scope of the damage. They first checked on employees, all of whom were safe but reported damage to cars and homes. One employee said his roommate died, having been swept away by rushing floodwaters.

Once electricity and cell service were restored, they started to hear about the fate of their vendors. Biscuit Head’s production facility for jams and biscuit mix, located near the Swannanoa River, suffered major flooding, as did French Broad Chocolate’s café and production facility near the French Broad River. Similar stories kept trickling in.

The Kochas turned their attention to the warehouse, one of two they owned and an epicenter of their operations. They focused on salvaging whatever they could, from brooms and mops to office furniture. “We didn’t have any money, so we had to save what we could,” Jeff says. Their three children—including a son who’s a firefighter in Asheville and his twin sister who’s a paramedic in Transylvania County—showed up to help.

The task was daunting, but the kindness of friends and neighbors burst through—just as it did throughout the region. Their banker, for example, offered them office space, which allowed them to access valuable records, while friends traveled from out of state to help power-wash the mud off any equipment that could be saved.

Because the warehouse had been almost full when Helene hit, Blue Mountain was facing hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt— mostly owed to the local vendors that had given them the food that had been destroyed. But in an overwhelming gesture of community, more than two dozen of those vendors canceled their invoices and cleared them of that debt. “We couldn’t believe that our community, family and loyal vendors showed us they had our backs and would continue to support us on this journey,” Jeff says.

A setback was suffered when the Kochas were told that the Fletcher warehouse had suffered too much damage to be saved. For a brief moment, they considered walking away from the business. “I built that warehouse with my own two hands,” Jeff says. “We were already looking forward to retirement and spending more time with our grandkids.” But when they realized how many local business owners relied on them for their own success, they decided they had to soldier on. “We know how many families would be impacted, and this is what led Gina and I to take the step toward rebuilding,” Jeff says.

As luck would have it, a friend of theirs owned a large warehouse that was sitting empty in Spartanburg, South Carolina, about an hour south of Asheville, and he offered the space to Blue Mountain for free for six months. Initially meant as a temporary solution, the Spartanburg warehouse has proven to be well positioned for regional deliveries and will now serve as a hub. Jeff and Gina, using their home in Hendersonville as a temporary office, are looking for a new location near Asheville.

Since the hurricane, Blue Mountain Distributions has added dozens of popular brands to their inventory, including the Asheville-based seasoning company Spicewalla, the beloved bread maker Annie’s Bakery and a maker of handcrafted sodas, Waynesville Soda Jerks. They also found that the demand for local products among big retailers like Ingles is now higher than ever.

The Kochas now predict the business will be 100% operational by the end of 2025, if not stronger and bigger and certainly more resilient. “I’ve said this 100 times, but this community is so supportive of local,” Gina says. “The consumers of Western North Carolina, they’re awesome—they’re the most dedicated and loyal supporters of their local companies.”