ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Every year, over 600 local businesses in Asheville put a new sticker in their window.
“Go Local card honored here,” read the small stickers, decorated with a red heart and a black-and-white animal mascot. This year, it’s a black bear. The animal is often considered an unofficial mascot of the city.
“The black bear is just so indicative of Asheville,” said Go Local executive director Sherree Lucas. “We had it a few years ago too. It was so well-received and we have so many new people every year, I thought, I’m going to bring that bear back.”
The cards aren’t only a cute piece of local artwork. The Go Local card is a $25 purchase that grants access to exclusive perks, discounts and benefits at every business in the Go Local Asheville directory. Hundreds of shops, services and restaurants in the Asheville area are part of the network.
It’s free for a business to join Go Local. Eligibility is straightforward: businesses must be locally and independently operated in Buncombe County and offer a perk for cardholders.
“It’s a community based organization. The way that we work is that there’s no membership fee, we just ask for a discount or perk to be able to sell Go Local cards,” said Lucas. “That’s our revenue source that we use then to support our local independent business community as well as our local schools.”
20% of the profits generated by card sales are divided between Asheville City Public Schools, the Asheville City School Foundation and the Buncombe County School Foundation. The latter was added for the first time this year.
“Buncombe County has so many schools that to try and split between the schools wouldn’t really be very helpful to the individual schools,” said Lucas. “But the Foundation there does a lot of work with grants and teachers, working to help support teachers in the schools. So we thought that would be a good way to go.”
To date, Go Local has raised over $275,000 for schools.
“We also give 100 free cards to each of the schools’ PTAs and to the foundations,” said Lucas. “They can sell the cards, they can give them to teachers for Teacher Appreciation. They can really do whatever they’d like to with them, but most of them sell the cards as fundraisers. At $25 a card, that’s $2,500 if they sell all the cards.”
The Go Local initiative isn’t just a school fundraiser, either. When it comes to supporting businesses, Go Local is an ally for everything.
“Food, and entertainment, and boutiques, and spas, and therapists, and landscapers and, I mean, we have every category that you can think of represented in Go Local, which is thrilling to me,” Lucas said. “It’s not only retail brick-and-mortar downtown. We have so many home-based or web-based businesses that are here.”
Local Asheville commerce was heavily impacted by the destruction from Hurricane Helene. The resulting devastation from the storm is what led to the proclamation of February 2025 as Love Asheville, Go Local month. The first time the proclamation was made was during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This was a time too that local independent businesses were hurting,” Lucas explained. “January, February, March is just a slow time here. It seemed like a really good time to remind locals how important this community is and how important it is to support them. So, this year, coming out of Helene, it seemed like a good time to go back to the city.”
Virtually every business in Asheville was impacted by the storm, Lucas pointed out. It made the proclamation feel all the more relevant.
“There was this domino effect that, basically, you could say everyone was impacted in some way,” Lucas said. “It just seemed like a really good time to remind everyone why it’s important to support local any day of the year, but especially now.”
Go Local cards can be purchased online or in-person at Asheville Shop at the Visitor’s Center, B.B. Barns Garden Center, Black Dome, East Fork, French Broad Chocolate Lounge, French Broad Food Co-op, Hickory Nut Gap Farm Store, Hip Replacements Clothing, K2 Studio, Malaprop’s, Mine and Yours Asheville Resale, Purl’s Yarn Emporium, Round Earth Roasters
, Second Gear, Sparky’s Toys & Gifts, Sow True Seed, The Hop North, The Hop West, West Village Market and Whist.
For more information, visit www.golocalasheville.com.