Category: Profiles

The Bangor Daily News has published an article about the Portland Food Co-op and their efforts to scale up and open a retail store.

In a warehouse in downtown Portland, scores of people share a secret. Two nights a week, a local farm-fresh cornucopia including beets, chard and free-range chickens are packed into boxes and sent out the door.

Is it the best farmers market you’ve never heard of?

Not quite. It’s the Portland Food Co-op, and it hopes soon to be a visible part of this food-centric city.

The Bangor Daily News has published a profile on Little Bigs bakery.

Set up like an open kitchen, Pamela makes dough in one area while her husband prepares fillings in another. Little Bigs takes customers off guard. Is it a shop or a commercial bakery?

It’s neither.

“We call it a food studio. A place where we come to work and it just so happens that we sell the stuff that we do,” James said. “We are both very happy to do what we do.”

The Press Herald has published an article about Portland-based vegan cheese maker, Betsy Nelson.

“A lot of people say to me, ‘I would go vegan, but I can’t give up cheese,’” said Nelson, 31, who lives on Munjoy Hill in Portland. “That was the thing I missed, too.”

To satisfy her taste for cheese, Nelson began making small-batch, artisanal cheeses from fermented nut milks. Her soft cheeses can be served on bread or crackers and pair well with fruit and wine. They are totally dairy free.

The Bangor Daily News has published an article about the grow selection of Maine barbeque destinations.

Chef Josh Craigue, sliding ribs into Salvage’s indoor smoker on a recent Friday afternoon, took a minute to explain.

“We are getting the basics down and then will add a Maine touch. That’s what we are excited about,” said Craigue. “We have the an opportunity to put Maine on the map as a barbecue destination.”

Here’s another quirky video profile by Joe Duley. In this episode he visits Saltwater Grille in South Portland.

Eater Maine has published an article about Briana Warner and her new business, Maine Pie Line (website, facebook).

Briana Warner has used pie to bring violent youth leaders to the table in Guinea and tested her recipes on ambassadors in Belgium. But after several years of her pies playing a secondary (though complementary) role to her work as a diplomat with the U.S. State Department, Warner is now making pie her primary focus.

The Business section in today’s Press Herald provides a look at Schlotterbeck & Foss.

While Schlotterbeck & Foss sells its own branded sauces, toppings, dressings, marinades and other specialty food products at Whole Foods, the biggest and fastest-growing part of the business is creating “co-branded” products for grocery stores.

That means Schlotterbeck & Foss often doesn’t get the recognition for its creations, which are sold by various retailers under their own brands.

Schlotterbeck & Foss was founded in 1866. It’s 2nd oldest food enterprise in Portland after the Farmers Market (1768).

Also in today’s Business section is an interview with Kathleen Fleury, the new executive editor at Down East. Fleury began her career at DE as the magazine’s food writer.

BBC New has posted an article about Maine Mead Works.

Long relegated to the dusty corners of history, mead – the drink of kings and Vikings – is making a comeback in the US.

But what’s brewing in this new crop of commercial meaderies – as they are known – is lot more refined from the drink that once decorated tables across medieval Europe.