Category: People

The Southern Smoke Foundation (SSF) has announced they’ll be partnering with the University of Maine to pilot their mental health program for food and beverage workers in Maine this summer. The program is called Behind You.

SSF is providing a grant to University of Maine’s Psychology Services Center to provide no-cost counseling to F+B workers across Maine through the Behind You program. A Behind You grant covers the cost of counseling for F+B workers who qualify through the SSF website and allows student clinicians to diversify their training by seeing a community of seasoned F+B workers with various backgrounds. A licensed clinical supervisor and the university program director supervise all student clinicians. In addition, SSF requires university partners to provide telehealth services to increase accessibility for workers with demanding schedules or living in rural areas with limited access to in-person services. The initial grant will be for a pilot program with hopes of expanding services in 2025.

SSF credits Jordan Rubin—co-owner of Mr. Tuna, Bar Futo and Crispy Gai—with advocating to SSF to bring Behind You to Maine.

“I’ve gotten the chance to work alongside the team at Southern Smoke Foundation for a few years now – whether that’s cooking at their annual Southern Smoke Festival in Houston, TX, or connecting my staff and friends in the industry with them to apply for Emergency Relief Funding,” said chef Jordan Rubin. “The fact that the Behind You program will now also be available to my team and other food and beverage workers across Maine to receive free counseling if they’re interested makes me so happy.”

Here’s a link to the full press release from SSF. The Southern Smoke Foundation also offers an Emergency Relief program for food and beverage workers.

Mainebiz has published an interview with Danielle Camarata, an owner of B + B Bakery. The business recently moved to Cape Elizabeth from Fore Street in Portland.

MB: Why Cape Elizabeth?
DC: Our Portland location was good for visibility, but we didn’t have great parking for pick-ups and looked around at what our options were for moving. We knew our lease was coming up there, so we opted for Cape Elizabeth for the convenience. It’s still close enough to Portland, and there’s great parking and it’s convenient for employees. We live in Cape Elizabeth, too.

Mainebiz has published a profile of Michael Bergin, the new executive chef at the Black Point Inn.

After honing his culinary skills at Johnson & Wales University, Bergin moved to Washington, D.C., to cook at Kafe Leopold. In 2007, he was named executive sous chef at Sel de la Terre in Boston, followed by a post there as sous chef of L’Espalier — both famed, old-school French restaurants that have since closed.

Fore Street’s wine curator Kelly Nelson was one of the 100 Top Sommeliers consulted by Wine & Spirits magazine for their recent restaurant issues.

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes an article about brothers Bounahra and Bounahcree Kim who are the chefs at Miyake and the soon to open Oun Lido’s.

The young Kim brothers, born to Cambodian immigrant parents, are bona fide rising star chefs. Their ascendant career trajectories show that if you’re ceaselessly hard-working, humble, gracious, exceedingly polite, joyful, respectful and well respected by seemingly everyone around you, you just may find success.

The paper also has a report on how fewer office workers is impacting lunch time restaurant business.

Those figures, however, only consider whether a business is paying for the space and not whether or how often people are coming into work there. According to several local business and real estate organizations, there are no statistics available that show how much the downtown workforce population has dropped because of remote work. But the store owners and managers witnessing it daily say they’ve seen 15%-30% less downtown foot traffic on weekdays, and that drop makes it challenging to run a small business.