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Date: 11/24/25
Duration: 26:57
Guest: Lynn Staggs
Website: The Storehouse
Listen on Spotify:
Summary:
Episode 12 with Lynn Staggs with The Storehouse
In this episode of Living Local, Ed Frisbee sits down with Lynn Staggs, founder and director of The Storehouse in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Lynn shares the story behind the ministry’s 25 years of serving Henderson County through year-round food support, coats and blankets, and the well known Blessings in Boxes Christmas program. She opens up about the growing need across the community, how rising housing costs are pushing workers out of the county, and why The Storehouse continues to see record numbers of families needing help.
Lynn explains how the food pantry operates, where their supplies come from, and how volunteers and donors keep the shelves stocked. She also highlights their senior delivery routes, their partnerships with local schools, churches, businesses, and the massive Christmas effort that serves thousands of children each year. The episode also gives a first look at their upcoming move to a new facility designed to better serve the community and act as a resource during future emergencies.
Listeners will learn how to support The Storehouse through donations, sponsoring a child for Christmas, volunteering, and spreading the word. The conversation wraps up with Lynn’s favorite Hendersonville spots, local eats, and hidden mountain gems.
This episode is a heartfelt look at community care in action and a reminder of how much impact a local nonprofit can have when people pitch in together.
Watch on YouTube:
Transcript:
Thanks for joining us again. I'm excited to have our special guest, Lynn Staggs. It's a perfect time of year to have her. She's with the storehouse here in Hendersonville or Henderson County. Lynn, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule right now to come in and talk with us. All right. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Give us a quick overview about yourself and the ministry you have. And then I have several questions for you. Okay. I am a local, which there's not many of us left. so was born and raised here and
I love Hendersonville and the residents thereof. The storehouse is a ministry that was born out of the love for the people here. serve all of Henderson County. We do food. That's our main program that we do all year long. Then we do Christmas, which is absolutely insane, but we have the best time while we're doing it. And then we have coats and blankets.
And we're also moving into a new facility at the end of this year or the very beginning of next year. That's very exciting. Yes. So how long has the storehouse been around? This is our 25th year. Wow. We had our 25th anniversary in May. Congratulations. And you started it. Yes. And founded it. Yes. That's amazing. I didn't know what I was doing. ⁓ Jesus tricked me.
So give us a quick overview of that 25 years. I well, we had just bought our first house over off 191 and I put this ad in the paper said had too many flowers want to trade and I ran across this little old lady who her name was Miss Elizabeth and she was about 80. She was in her 80s then and I noticed that she had beautiful flowers.
but not a lot of food. And I didn't like that. I was aggravated by that. And I kept noticing that there were some elderly people in our neighborhood and they didn't always have enough, what I considered enough stock of food. So that started rolling the idea around in my head of we need to do a food pantry. And it was right before Y2K, of course.
And everybody lost their mind And and then the world didn't come to an end and so we needed we had work to do and we started a food pantry and we've been doing it ever since and I started with my five little old ladies and now we serve hundreds of families every It seems like every week now We're serving hundreds of people and how does that work? Do those people come by your
This place? Okay. They come by and we pack boxes based on how many people in the family. So a regular ticket may, we have a one person ticket, a two, three, four, and the amount of food in the box goes by the amount of people in the household. And is it certain times of the week or all the time? Right now we are Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, nine to two.
because we are in the front two units of this building. People drive by and they think that we have this giant building, but we just had the front two units and it's only like 4,200 square feet. And that is just enough to have some office space and a food pantry with all the refrigeration and everything in there. So we're constantly having to go out and get more food. I mean, to serve.
you know hundreds of families a week we're constantly going out and getting food every day and fresh produce and meats and different things so the turnover is really fast and where do or does the food come from is it donations from stores or from people or well we get a lot of donations from people churches food drives schools
⁓ Do food drops for us, but we actually go out and shop We have been partners with Aldi's and save more and Ingalls and ⁓ Sam's Club we go anywhere in town Whoever's got a sale. That's where we're shopping And those funds come from donations. Yes, we are completely Supported by the community
And we do get grants from local charities. Community foundation is a big supporter of ours as far as food goes. Western Carolina community foundation, Cummings foundation. We've had several good grants for food from the bigger foundations. That's great. Yes. Throughout the 25 years, throughout the 25 years, but especially in the last 10, 15 years. have you seen, uh,
more a bigger need the past few years or since Helene or is kind of stable as previous years? We were going along everything was pretty steady. Helene was an anomaly. ⁓ It did not just change the surface of Henderson County, the land, it also changed the population. So when people go out now and you may go up to a restaurant
and see that you can't go in because the dining area is not open because they can't afford to live here. The workers can't afford to live here. So a lot of people have moved away and it has changed the whole face of Henderson County. And I've seen that more and more in the numbers that there's no middle. It's either extremely poor.
or extremely wealthy and the middle gap is much wider than it was a year ago. That's very interesting. You're the first person to point that out, but I've wondered such. Well, it is going to affect people because when COVID happened, people moved here. They flocked here from everywhere and that was great for realtors. Yay. Y'all were doing good. It was great for homeowners because my property value went through the moon.
But for people who were trying to buy a house or wanted to stay in Henderson County, they got priced out. So your people who worked at restaurants and care facilities, which we are known for our wonderful care facilities, they can't afford to live here. So a lot of people live at the bottom of the mountain and drive up, or they live in the outskirts and drive 30, 40, 50 minutes. Even where my husband works.
people are driving from South Carolina to go to Meritor to work. Yep. I would say the past, you're correct, COVID for sure. So 2020, lots of people moved down the mountain as we like to say, but somebody's not familiar Landrum, South Carolina area, maybe TR, Travelers' Arrest. But typically Landrum is what I've experienced and have seen. Yeah. Tuxedo, I mean, Campobella, kind of, yep. Yeah.
They're driving an hour. Yep. So if you just put your finger in the middle of Hendersonville and drive that one hour circle around, although that one hour circle could be just in Fletcher at this point. So the circle is shorter on that side of the county. So somebody's hearing this just, I don't know how far in we are, but how can somebody help or reach out? What are some things we can do?
Well, one, we always need food and two, we can turn money into food. You can go to storehouseonline.org. We have a great website. You can see pictures of all the things we do. You can see the needs list are on there. There's videos on there. You can see our volunteers on there. You can come in and we'll give you a tour. If you stay long enough, I'll put you to work.
⁓ Or Linda will. Linda is a great office manager. She puts everybody to work. You need that. We all need more Lindas in our life. I have five at my office and it's because I didn't want to learn any new names. That was it. Literally five Lindas. I literally have five Lindas. I have Linda the bookkeeper, Linda the cleaner, Linda the office manager, Linda who helps me at Christmas, and then we have another Linda who works in the back packing boxes.
So yes, Linda's rule at my office. Are they all spelled the same way? Yes, they are. Yes, they are. All right. So people go online. Is that the best or is there a phone number also? We're 828-692-8300 or you can email me at linn at storehouseonline.org. And
I don't think you've mentioned about the new, well, you mentioned maybe end of the year or early next year, but can you give us a quick overview about that and its location? we are moving 1.7 miles up the road and I'm so excited. We were very blessed that we were able to buy a piece of property right next to East Flat Rock First Baptist Church. They are a very good partner with us and it is a great location.
There's a bus stop right there. We will still be able to serve people the same way we're serving them now. We'll just have a lot better space to do it in. And we also will be able to have a cooking class. We are trying to set up ⁓ with the county so that if we have another emergency, this building is outfitted with a giant kitchen and some showers.
and we should be able to accommodate if Duke Energy has need or if the county has need that they could use our building as a base to have an outpost that the workers could come in and out and you know set up their equipment do things of that nature. Well that sounds great. Well I want to get every penny's worth out of that building. I don't want it to sit idle and just work.
four or five days a week. If we can use it seven days a week, let's use it seven days a week. Cause it's costing me seven days a week. So tell us this time of year, do you have special needs around Thanksgiving and Christmas? I would love to think about Thanksgiving, but from December 25th till the next December 25th till the next December 25th, I always have a project.
relating to Christmas going on. So we partner with Henderson County Public Schools and in October, at the beginning of October, we go to four different locations for a 10 day time frame and we do intakes in each school district and we sit across the table from the families and do intakes to find out, you know, what size clothes their kids wear, what kind of...
toys they like, what kind of needs they may have. And we write it all down, we turn all of that information into tags, we pass them out in the community, and then we have been invited so many times over. We were at First Baptist Church for a long time, and then we outgrew that, and then Upward Christian Fellowship hosted us, and we outgrew that, and...
If we outgrow Living Water, I don't know what's going to happen to us. Living Water Church has hosted us for quite a few years now and they are so kind in saying, come on in and destroy our building. So we go sugarloaf. Right. Okay. 1284 Charlotte road and the pastor there, Tony Burkhead, he's so gracious with us.
He gives us the whole building for a week. We come in on a Sunday after they finish service and we take everything apart and put it together and we start the gifts come in and we start setting it up and it takes us Monday through Thursday to get it ready and Friday and Saturday we give it all away and it is a it is a circus
on a hurricane riding roller coaster drinking Red Bull. That's exactly what it is. And sorry, when is this again? Or it already happened? No, it is coming up. it is coming up. And I still have hundred and seventy kids who need to be sponsored. So what do people do? How can they help? You can call us at six nine two eighty three hundred. You can email me at Lynn at storehouse online dot org. You can go on our.
website and email at the website. It will come to me. Trust me, all forms of communication hit my phone. And a tag means? One child. Okay. Each tag is for one child. If you have a group, if your neighbors want to come together, if your family wants to sponsor another family, if you want to get with your friends and take one tag and everybody buy one gift on it.
I don't care how you break it up as long as it comes back together and gets back on time. Yay. So a tag would say ⁓ what that child would like and you go get those gifts or you give the money. You get the gifts and it has packaging instructions on the back. ⁓ We have the families all grouped together by family number. So you may get a
Sibling and I may get a sibling and we don't know each other right But when it comes back into the building It will have that family number and we can put them back together And if somebody's wondering a tag cost could be how much could somebody be I never put a price tag on a tag, okay? I Want people to give what they are comfortable give we have our own store in-house
The Apple country woodworkers make wooden toys for us. Some people can't sponsor a whole child, so they just bring us random toys. And we have a stock. ⁓ We just people donate random toys. We know what to buy in advance and we have a budget for that. So we bring it all together and it works out. We make very few trips.
to Walmart or other places, we usually shop everything in-house. I think that speaks a lot, for the storehouse, the organization, your leadership, but also to our community for stepping up from what it sounds like. Our community is amazing. You know, I go, we go on vacation, you visit other places and they're beautiful, but I can't see that they would do what we do here.
and people who move here from other places and come in and experience blessings and boxes, they're like, we've never seen anything like this. So I encourage you to come out. Even if you can't sponsor a kid, come out and experience the hurricane. ⁓ Somebody will take you on a tour if you come out. And it is something that needs to be seen.
The pictures are great, the videos are awesome, but there is nothing like being in that room. You cannot replicate that in a video or a photo. I'd probably cry, I think. I get teared up quickly. I and I'm there every year. It moves me to the point of tears every year. There's something about people helping people.
And just the sheer magnitude of the room. Last year after the hurricane, we had tractor trailer truckloads coming in from Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Florida, Mississippi of people who were taking 50, 75, 100 kids. Last year was an anomaly and we had more kids than we had ever.
had, we did over 2,700 kids last year. And they got more than they ever did, but they lost everything. So we're talking bedding and clothes, multiple outfits and bikes. I thought the walls of the church were gonna fall down. It was so full. But it worked. we had, I mean, Mr. Joel Benson runs,
wonderful Chick-fil-A drive-through, but I roasted him last year. We ran 1,000 families through our drive-through in a day and a half. Wow, that's impressive. We were loading eight cars at a time. Gosh. Yes, and it was exhausting, exhilarating.
the most gratifying thing I think I've ever done. And I went home and I think I went to sleep in my clothes two, three days in a row. So it's not, mean, December, the holidays are a big time, but it's year round. is year round. We feed people who are hungry year round. So the Christmas is wonderful. It's all the warm fuzzies you'll ever need, but people need to eat every day.
And as long as there's little old people here, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure they have what they need. And my favorite, it is my old people that are my favorite. I'm not going to lie. ⁓ we have a senior delivery route that we do every month. They get their food delivered to them. So we have seven different routes that cover all of Henderson County. There's currently 60. ⁓
seniors on our route and they get all their groceries delivered and then they get a little extra other than the people who walk in because they have to meet certain criteria. They have no family, no transportation, over 60, things of that nature. They have the worst of the worst circumstances, but they also
we're trying to make sure that they get things that food stamps don't cover. We make sure every month they're getting toilet paper, paper towels, ⁓ laundry detergent, trash bags, things like that that cost money. People just assume, well, they're okay, they get food stamps. Yeah, a lot of them get $14 a month or something crazy like that. ⁓
that does not cover any of those other things. So we do those things, we make sure they get a prize bag, I think, I call it a prize bag for lack of a better term, a necessity bag. So in December, they're all getting new pillows and pillowcases. And I know that that's not, you know, my goodness, they're gonna die without a new pillow or pillowcase, but what if they haven't had one in four or five years?
How often do you get new pillows and pillowcases? If they smell funny at my house, they're going in the trash. Well, you just brought up an odd subject. My personal pillow is probably 10 years old and I love it because it's flat. My wife can't stand it, but I like a flat pillow. So I do change the pillowcase often. Well, mean, but the point is, yes, if you wanted a new pillow.
you would go get a new pillow. They don't have that option. And that's the thing the prize bags give them are options they don't have. We make sure every year that everybody gets socks and a blanket. I try to do pillows, things that they, that are expensive. ⁓ You know.
You're lucky. I don't ask my husband. I just take the pill and throw it away. I think that happened once or twice. I had to ask them. Just go home and tell your wife, thank you. Lynn, thank you for your ministry. I want to switch gears real fast. If you grew up in the area and you have people coming to visit in town, what are some of the areas you say, hey, you got to go check out?
goodness. I always say if you can drive just a little bit go find go see pretty place. ⁓ you're the first to say that. my goodness yeah I remember that's lots of memories as kids. If you can withstand the cold you have to drive up to the top at Pisgat or just straight up when you go to Brevard and take that first lift and go to the first little outlook there.
and see cold mountain because it isn't just a book and it isn't just a movie it's a real place. There's just little tucked away gems. If the road is fixed you need to go to the top of Laurel Park and look off at Jump Off. It's beautiful out there. Little treasures like that I would think.
Little place. You're the first. That's a great reminder. yeah. How about food? Any restaurants or places you say, hey, you got to try this when you're in town. Well, as you can tell, I like it all. I'm partial to Mexican food. We love Mexican food. It's really funny. I like one thing at one Mexican restaurant and one thing at another. There's no better salsa in town than it.
⁓ Zapatas. ⁓ that's salsa. I've never tried their salsa. Their salsa is amazing. And they have a couple of things on their menu that just can't be matched. Fresh, hot off the grill every single time. But then papas and beer. Papas and beer. It's top. See that? That's a, that's a hard, that's a hard line between the two.
Then you had the barbecue place out in Flat Rock, the Wood Room. That's pretty good. The Wood Room's delicious. Have you ever had their burger pachans? The Wagyu. Yeah, it's amazing. But then in town, if you are a French fry nut, Baker's Box is the only place to go for You're right. They have delicious fries. Because they're real potatoes. Yeah. But Baker's Box, they put love in their sandwiches and stuff.
It's delicious. They've got good food. think you're the you might be the second to say baker's box, but it's delicious. I always forget about it. no, I never. ⁓ it's all about French fries. And then if you need ice cream, Celtic Creamery. I've never been there. I go to Kilwin's. Yeah. You've never been to Celtic Creamery. Isn't that a sin somewhere? Probably. I'm telling Kim on you. I need to go. My kids have been, but I never been. You definitely need to go. OK.
Yes. Awesome. Yep. Well, it's approaching lunch, so that's good. So, Lynn, there anything I've missed? Tell people one more time. storehouseonline.org. Where the phone number is? 828-692-8300. And for the next month, we're at 1049 Spartanburg Highway. And then we're going to be at 2313 Spartanburg Highway. That's very exciting.
And you have a strong need. This will actually go out in a few days, right before Thanksgiving and we'll push it several times, but you have a 180 ish, 170 left. We're not, we're not going to fib. have 170 tags left of children who need to be sponsored for Christmas. And you, you'll take an overage and use them for next year. No, I'm going to give it all away this year. We'll stuff those bags back. Awesome. That's even better. Yeah. Not greedy, very generous.
That's even better. That's a good thank you. Sounds like a great ministry obviously 25 plus years. So thank you. Love my volunteers. Thank you for your service, your commitment, your heart, ⁓ sensing the Lord's leading and to the volunteers as well. So thanks for taking time to talk with us. Thank you for having us. Absolutely and to our listeners and watchers keep living local.