Rebuild Downtown Spruce Pine , Hance and Amy

Hi we are Hance and Amy, the owners of The Appalachian Hat Company, The Mad Hatter Tavern and The Mad Platter Pizza. We are rebuilding and reopening the first floor of our hat shop / tavern building and in turn helping to rebuild the entirety of downtown Spruce Pine that was demolished by Hurricane Helene in September 2024. The business that was previously there is unable to return and we have made a deal and a commitment to move our tavern down there and expand our hat shop, so that I will be able to make hats in the shop. The tavern will help support local musicians and artists, as we will now have the space to have larger bands and feature some local art with live painting and more. The downtown shops are slowly rebuilding, but facing new strict and outrageously expensive building codes, forcing them to spend upwards of $40,000 on just one storefront window alone due to an impact glass requirement. We all desperately need our town to rebuild and we have an amazing opportunity to be a place for everyone to hang out, enjoy music, movie nights and have food options, which we all desperately need. The pizza trailer, which we have already invested in will be down permanently by the tavern and the kitchen inside will eventually serve charcuterie and a tapas style small bite menu.

So we're doing something Hance and I have never done before...we're asking for our friends help financially. Combined we have over 2000 facebook friends. If even half of our friends donated $10-20, we would be able to make this happen. The funds will be spent on hard costs to reopen the first floor of our building, such as painting, rebuilding, buying kitchen equipment, furnishings, light fixtures, etc. It will also help re-employ local, out of work service industry staff, some of which worked in the previous restaurant, by creating a start up payroll fund.

We currently don't have the funds to do any of this and the loans we have been offered have upwards of 17% interest and the payments would be impossible.

We will be posting all the receipts of what this money is used for, and any leftover funds will go directly to the other property owners / businesses rebuilding on the flooded lower street of Spruce Pine.

We've applied for grants and other funds, but so far nothing has come through. If someday our grants do come through and we don't need the money, at that point we will also pay it forward to the other businesses who are our partners and friends in this community, to help them rebuild as well. We can't thank you enough for helping and everyone we know, all our wonderful friends, residents and patrons, thank you as well.

In addition, I will be auctioning off my original Bear painting (name tbd) for this fund as well. More info and link to coming soon