Kara + Nate

Asheville Brewery Map is created, owned, and operated by Nate Rice and Kara Bonelli. We started dating nine years ago in Wilmington, NC, and after a single weekend trip to Asheville, we knew this is where we wanted to put down roots. We moved here six years ago, and have worked in breweries ever since.

As bartenders, it wasn’t long before we found ourselves being asked the same question over and over again - “Where do we go next, and how do we get there?”

At first, we didn’t really know how to answer. We were new here ourselves. But the more we explored the area, the more confident we became in our suggestions, and eventually, we realized that the best answer would be to create something that somehow didn’t already exist, a map of all the breweries and our favorite local businesses in the downtown Asheville area.

We are artists, and we wanted that reflected in the map. The cover is 100% hand-drawn by Kara, the streets are hand-traced, and the backgrounds feature her watercolor paintings. She created, by hand, the font that is used for the streets, a task that would have been impossible without the third piece of our ABM puzzle, Kitsumi Reynalte.

Kistumi was a brewery co-worker who used her graphic design skills to digitize Kara’s artwork and help us mass-produce it. She saw our vision, believed in it, and helped us bring it to life. Nate started writing brewery descriptions and approaching the local businesses we loved, looking for support and sponsorship through advertising.

We were able to get our first print run off the presses in October of 2025, thanks to the help of local printer Henco Repropgraphics, who taught us more than we thought we’d ever need to know about margins, bleed, paper weight, and more (we’re honestly still learning - thanks Coleman). We printed 5,000 maps, distributed them, and within a month and a half, every single one had been picked up.

We quickly got another Downtown print run going, and are now getting close to releasing the first ever West Asheville/River Arts map. We plan to cover every corner of this beautiful city, and then start expanding out (Black Mountain, here we come)!

We’re so grateful you found us here, and we hope that our maps answer that ever-burning question that every visitor has in a new place. We want Asheville to feel like your home, too, and we thank you for trusting us to tell you where to go next, and how to get there!