Tennessee coffee shop owners offering 'pay what you can' to residents in need following Hurricane Helene

When Hurricane Helene devastated the community that Corey and Melissa Ackerman live in, the couple jumped in to help ease the burden of the damage done by the deadly storm.

"Once we were able to get going again, it didn't feel right to just open the doors and go back to business as usual, you know. And so I just felt compelled to just try to give back in some kind of way. And so that's when we came up with the ‘pay what you can’," Corey Ackerman told Fox News Digital.

The Ackermans own a local coffee shop chain in Newport, Tennessee, Snowbird Mountain Coffee Co., which was one of many businesses in Cocke County that was hit by flooding caused by Hurricane Helene.

Corey Ackerman said that thanks to many volunteers, they were able to clear the flood water from their shop and received donated equipment from the community to get their shop up and running again.

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"We've had a lot of response of people all around the country and even local people dropping off donations to be able to help keep it (pay as you can) going for as long as possible, which is awesome," Melissa Ackerman said about their new business model. "And every day, we're giving away free coffee and free meals. So, I mean, it's… I don't know. It's awesome to know that in some small way we're able to help the community and give back and even just in a small way."

The Ackermans have lived in Cocke County since 2017. They said Newport did not have a lot going on for many years and, over the past year, the downtown was thriving with a handful of new businesses opening their doors.

"In the couple of blocks where a lot of that activity was happening, that just so happened to be the area that got the worst of the flooding. And it's just been heartbreaking to see everyone that poured so much into building the businesses down here just to literally watch them take all that and pull it out on the streets and have the trash trucks come and throw all that away," Corey Ackerman described. "That I don't know… that hit me, I think the hardest."

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Corey Ackerman continued describing how devastating it has been for him and Melissa to see their community suffering.

"There's a lot of people that lost their homes. I mean, to lose a business is one thing, but to lose your house is something else altogether. And I don't know, I think the only thing that's kind of kept everybody going was the fact that like I mean, as soon as the water went down, the community rallied and went to work. It was immediate, and it was a lot, which was amazing," Corey Ackerman said about the response to the clean-up efforts.

Melissa Ackerman said what she has seen and heard from their staff of the outpouring of support for those in need in their community has been overwhelming.

She even said people have been coming into their shop and leaving $100, mentioning that one customer even left $200 without buying anything and just left.

"Just knowing that… like what we decided to do to try to help and impact the community and to help these families and the people of the surrounding areas that have been impacted by this, but to see other people see the value in what we're doing, and they're wanting to contribute as well… I think that's been really awesome," Melissa Ackerman said.

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"We had a couple of really big donors be able to help get us back on our feet and, like I cried… I couldn't even look at them. That was amazing. Just to know that in our everyday life that we're touching people's soul and their spirit to want to be able to help get us back on our feet. And without those people, we wouldn't have been able to open at all," Melissa Ackerman continued.

The Ackermans said they have no plans to halt the ‘pay what you can program’ as they understand the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene will impact those in their community for years to come.

"We want to keep it going as long as possible. With all of the donations that are coming in, it has definitely been able to allow us to do that. So, as long as we keep getting the donations, we can keep it going because this area is going to be impacted for a very, very long time. This isn't going to be over by the end of October. This is going to be going on for years," Melissa Ackerman said. 

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The Ackerman's said they have other ideas in the works to raise money for families in need in their community. They have discussed doing a collaboration with the Gatlinburg Brewing Company on some coffee stouts and tossed around the idea of doing a specialty coffee roast that they would sell to raise some money for local families.

"We got a lot of good people here that need a lot of help right now. And so just any small thing helps," Melissa Ackerman said.

Corey Ackerman said he and Melissa have been blown away by not only the local support, but also support from all across the country.

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"I think one of the things that kind of blew me away was almost immediately when we made the post, they kind of went, I guess, viral for us. I mean, it had a half million views, which is a lot for anything we've ever done," Corey Ackerman said after announcing their new program aimed to help those in need. "And I mean, we had donations coming in from all over the country almost immediately. People that couldn't get here to help and felt compelled to do something. And so this was a way that they could contribute." 

The couple owns two Newport locations of Snowbird Mountain Coffee Co., along with a location in Morristown.