{"id":4707,"date":"2018-01-11T09:38:07","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T14:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beverly-hanks.com\/blog\/?p=4707"},"modified":"2018-01-11T09:38:07","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T14:38:07","slug":"zuma-coffee-marshall-nc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.naibeverly-hanks.com\/blog\/zuma-coffee-marshall-nc\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens When You Combine Cookies and Community? You Strike Gold!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"What
\nZuma Coffee is more than Marshall, North Carolina\u2019s unofficial meeting place and one of the most charming and delicious small businesses in the area. Zuma Coffee<\/a> draws people from all over Western North Carolina in search of gold\u2014Zuma Gold.
\n\u201cWhen we opened, we had our Zuma Gold cookie, we had chocolate chip, oatmeal raisins. Well, we found that people were traveling a long distance for one Zuma Gold cookie\u2014a $1 cookie,\u201d said Joel Friedman, owner of Zuma Coffee. \u201cPeople would drive from Black Mountain, from Hendersonville, just all over the community. And the word sorta spread around. It’s a love affair between cookie and community, basically.\u201d
\nYou\u2019re more likely to stumble upon actual gold than another cookie of this caliber. These treats are made with farm-fresh eggs from a farmer just down the road, combined with unbleached flour and real butter. Add all-natural, farm-fresh chocolate and stud them with Georgia pecans and walnuts. Suddenly, you\u2019ve uncovered the soft, chewy cookie known as the \u201cZuma Gold!<\/a>\u201d
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The Zuma Gold in all its chocolatey glory.<\/i><\/p>\n

In additional to this kingly treat, Zuma\u2019s baked goods, coffee, and welcoming atmosphere make it an integral part of the Marshall community.
\nSince 2002, Zuma has been serving fair-trade coffee to Marshall\u2019s 850-person population. At their start, Marshall was almost a forgotten town. Friedman\u2019s decision to open a 400-square-foot coffee shop in a town clinging to life was risky. However, many people credit Zuma Coffee as a major reason Marshall is now back on the map.
\n\u201cWhen I moved here, it was basically offices for the county that were here,\u201d said Friedman. \u201cThose moved to the bypass, so it really opened up this huge space for people to move in and kinda create a neighborhood as we went along. So very organically, it’s transformed into an arts and music community. Music and art has just always been a part of this area. And now just with the few people who are coming here, it’s gaining that spirit again.\u201d
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\nNow, the mountain town\u2019s population and popularity is exploding, and so is Zuma\u2019s. The coffee shop moved to a larger space on Main Street, more befitting the town\u2019s central community hub and one of the region\u2019s favorite coffee shops<\/a>. The additional space also allowed them to build Zuma Cookie Company and Zuma Too: Cookies and Cones. Zuma Too is Friedman\u2019s most recent partnership with Asheville-based Ultimate Ice Cream, offering all-natural, as-locally-sourced-as-possible sweet treats to a growing Southeastern customer base. Zuma cookies are baked in house and sold in store, as well as packaged for sale in local Ingles Markets grocery stores and nearby Hot Springs Resort and Spa.
\n\u201cYou know, I love that [Marshall is] growing very slowly and very organically and it happens through the people,\u201d said Friedman. \u201cThere’s a real impetus on keeping it community-based. So, I see it still continuing to grow in this pattern and becoming a real living community as opposed to a tourist community.\u201d
\n\u201cWhen I say \u2018community,\u2019 that’s the word that just always comes up here. We’re a town that all like each other.\u201d
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