'An adventure': New Asheville gourmet food store getting to the heart of customers' needs

ASHEVILLE - A shared love for food brought a local couple together, and now they're using food as a vessel to get to the heart of the community.

In February, Red Fiddle Vittles opened at 1800 Hendersonville Road in Asheville. The Appalachian kitchen and gourmet grocery offer catering services, heat-and-eat meals and packaged products.

However, that wasn’t always the plan for chef, owners and husband-wife team Matt Farr and Erica Beneke.

In 2018, the pair launched the business with a focus on small-scale private chef services. It has advanced to event catering and most recently a gourmet retail shop.

“With COVID there were a lot of things changes People were kind of doing things differently. Foodservice landscape has changed dramatically,” Farr said. “We heard from folks they were looking for restaurant quality food that they didn’t necessarily have to go to a restaurant to get. That’s kind of where that came from.”

The retail side features refrigerators and shelves stocked with local and regionally made items from farms and producers and other small gourmet food businesses.

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“A lot of the products here are things you would find at a farmers market,” he said. “We carry local eggs, local sausages, Hickory Nut Gap products, cheeses and charcuterie items.”

Other area brands include Shanti Elixirs, DJ's Pickles, Lusty Monk mustard and Dare vegan cheeses.

Red Fiddle Vittles stocks heat-and-eat meals and other items made in-house and for at-home preparation, including frozen biscuit doughs and cookie doughs, soups, mac-and-cheese and the bestselling chicken tenders.

Dinner special changes weekly.

One dish in the rotation is chicken satay with peanut sauce inspired by Farr’s travels through Asia and made with Beneke’s peanut sauce - a recipe that Farr said is one of the many reasons he married his wife.

In addition to private dinner and event catering, the chefs offer party platters, picnic supplies, bar snacks, community-supported agriculture (CSA) pick-up, weekly take-home meals, wholesale, holiday meals and more.

A long-term plan is to increase the capacity of their own products and expand the retail program of local food partners, Farr said. More pop-ups and collaborations and other pursuits that connect and build the community are to come, too.

Meet the chefs

For years, Beneke's and Farr’s travels and work experience revolved around food before it ultimately brought them together.

Beneke, of upstate New York, lived in Austin post-college before relocating to Asheville to be closer to family in 2017. She had attended culinary school and worked in restaurants for seven years in Austin but was burnt out by the industry, she said.

“I’ve been a chef my whole career. I always knew that’s what I wanted to do. I started working in kitchens when I was like 11 and 12,” Beneke said.

Farr, of Memphis, had traveled across Asia and lived in Nashville and Chattanooga before going deeper into the mountains to settle down in Asheville in 2016.

“The mountains were the biggest draw. The vibe here is very chill and welcoming,” he said. “I think both the people and the mountains really drew us to the space. We love it here. It’s the longest either one of us has lived in a single space in our lives, so I think we’re probably here to stay.”

Five years ago, the two met while Farr was a volunteer manager for MANNA FoodBank and Beneke signed up to volunteer for the organization’s annual fundraiser, Empty Bowls.

“When I moved to Asheville, I wanted to do something different but didn’t quite know what that looked like, but knew I wanted it to be food-centric,” Beneke said.

Catering started off with small-scale personal chef work and weekly meal prep. Weekend catering event requests came soon after, including working side-by-side with Farr for one of MANNA FoodBank’s volunteer appreciation parties.

“After we did that we were like, ‘Hey, we’re pretty good at this. This is kind of fun,’ so Matt quit his job at MANNA, and we started Red Fiddle,” Beneke said.

One year later, they launched Red Fiddle Vittles. And since then, they’ve married, had a baby and expanded the business to include a brick-and-mortar storefront.

Meal plans and pandemic pivots

The COVID-19 pandemic thwarted their original plan to operate as a traditional catering company, Beneke said. Events were canceled leading the partners to restructure, grow and evolve into something new at the Hendersonville location.

“As we spent more time down here and learned about the community around here, there’s such a densely populated area of town and very little local food down here,” she said. “There’s lots of chains and local box restaurants. People were really excited to have new local options here.”

Red Fiddle Vittles is in the Dingle Crossing shopping center in the suite formerly occupied by Little Caesar. The kitchen space offered much of what they needed in its structure with room to customize it to their needs.

“We looked for a kitchen for probably be two or two and a half years before landing on this spot, and it happened to come with a little retail area,´ Farr said. “We kind of pivoted.”

They decided to offer chef-prepared dishes using locally sourced ingredients and sold at a reasonable price, he said.

“We skew a little higher than casual eateries, but we use local ingredients, pay a living wage, we try to do all the good things by our staff and by our community and by the people who produce and make the food and that’s really what it comes down to for us,” Farr said.

Customers’ needs and occasions vary, including small dinner parties with friends and destination weddings.

“We just had a couple who were in town and wanted to stock up their vacation rental, so they grabbed a bunch of things, so they didn’t have to go to a grocery store and shop and cook food and clean dishes while they’re here on vacation,” Farr said. “Over the summer, we had folks come in getting picnic provisions and things to fill out party boards. Odds and ends to make what they were already doing even more special. We fill a lot of different gaps in that way.”

They are expanding their bar snack program that features items like locally foraged mushroom confit, goat cheese and beet dip, spicy bleu pimento cheese and duck rillettes.

In the pandemic, some businesses began to outsource their food programs, creating more opportunities for Red Fiddle Vittles, Farr said.

Six months ago, Noble Cider began placing weekly food orders to its two taprooms that include an elevated menu of items that take minimal preparation and storage, such as dips and spreads. Recently, Red Fiddle Vittles began fulfilling orders for Stone Ashe Vineyard in Hendersonville.

“A lot of food business owners have had to think creatively on how they can diversify their revenue streams so if something happens that one of our avenue streams is shut down for a while you have other things you can focus on and hone in to stay afloat. It’s a been an adventure,” Farr said.

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Behind the name

The name Red Fiddle Vittles was inspired first by the word “vittles.”

“Vittles is an old word. It comes from the English ‘victuals’ and then ‘vittles’ is a local adaptation of that very old word. The original definition is a life-sustaining food,” Farr said.

“Fiddle” was inspired by word play as well as its connection to bluegrass music and Appalachian culture, Beneke said.

And the couple likes the color red.

“For the brand, vittles and victuals is an elevated word and also a folksy word and fiddle is an elevated instrument if you want to call it a violin but it’s also a folksy instrument,” Farr said. “We think the same way about our food. It’s comfort food but it’s special. It’s elevated, it’s high-quality ingredients, local sources but it’s approachable, fun and delicious and you keep coming back for it.”

Red Fiddle Vittles

Where: 1800 Hendersonville Road, Asheville

Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday-Friday and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday

Info: For details, visit redfiddlevittles.com.

Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at tkennell@citizentimes.com or follow her on Twitter/Instagram @PrincessOfPage. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Inside Red Fiddle Vittles, a gourmet food shop in Asheville