‪A growing number of takeout restaurants now sell groceries too. If a restaurmart sounds like a good match for your needs, then check out this list:

• Botto’s Provisions – is selling “Baking Essentials: flour, sugar, breadcrumbs, and YEAST!” Order online.
• Drifters Wife – will begin selling provisions and meal kits in early May. Order online.
• Frog and Turtle – sells a variety of canned goods, cheeses, breads, meats. Order online.
• Lake & Co – sells a wide variety of groceries. Order online.
• Local 188 – is selling groceries and provisions, “toilet paper, flour, eggs, butter, yeast, OJ, milk, half and half, paper towels, honey, olive oil, sugar, English muffins, corn tortillas, flour tortillas, canned tomatoes, hot peppers, onions, carrots, peppers, garlic, peppercorn, salt, dried beans, rice, hot sauce, potatoes AND fresh local fish from our fish monger”.
• Maine Beer Co. – sells flour, rice, cheese and other provisions. Order online.
• Mainely Burgers – has pick-up and delivery for a wide variety of provisions. Order online.
• Market Street Eats – is selling a regular and burly sized Basic Box consisting of eggs, flour vegetables, chicken, toilet paper, etc. Order online.
• More & Co. – is selling weekly Care Packages which include “Wine/beer/sparkling water, coffee, bread, cake, cheese, carrots, micro greens, flowers, tea and honey”. Order online.
• Novare Res – is selling ice cream, waffles, pasta, slim jims, nitrile gloves, potato chips, toilet paper, and other items. Order online.
• Po’ Boys & Pickles – Po’ Boys & Provisions sells “Eggs, Sugar, AP flour, Rice, Butter, Frozen Gumbo, Hot Sauce, and more items coming”. Order online.
• Sur Lie – sells “weekly, rotating selection of vegetables and meats from our local farmers at Stonecipher Farm and LP Bisson and Sons. There are two options…a vegetable farmer’s basket or a meat & vegetable farmer’s basket.” Order online.
• The Garrison – is selling staples like eggs, butter, pasta and paper towels along with chef Christian Hayes food. Order Online.

Update: The James Beard Foundation and the Bangor Daily News have now written about the trend of restaurants selling groceries.

Family Meal is a new weekly delivery service providing free meals to restaurant and bar staff in Portland who have lost their job due to the pandemic. The program will launch on Sunday, April 26th. Complete this form to sign-up.

Each week Family Meal will deliver “either a homemade lasagna or mac n’ cheese, two drinks (Rising Tide beer or soda) and a baked item.” Food will be provided on a first-come-first-serve basis. If the demand exceeds the supply the organizers will cycle through the list on the second week.

Family Meal is being launched by Those Familiar Spirits and the first week is sponsored by Hardshore Distilling and Rising Tide Brewing. To become a sponsor, or for more information contact brianarocks@gmail.com.

Restaurant critic Andrew Ross has written an article about the sound tracks restaurants use to reinforce the brands of their establishments.

To some, the opening bars of “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens sound like a station identification break from some long-forgotten, Deco-era radio station, the kind of tinkling glockenspiel theme you’d hear played live, every 15 minutes. But to me, that song will always sound like milky coffee and scones.

A fire broke out at Browne Trading Thursday night. The 3-alarm blaze was mostly contained to the retail store but the wholesale facility also sustained some damage, reports the Press Herald.

The flames were centered on the one-story retail store, Gautreau said. Fire heavily damaged the interior of the building and roof. Most of the three-floor production facility sustained smoke and soot damage, but firefighters were able to save about $250,000 worth of caviar that was stored inside, [Portland Fire Chief Keith] Gautreau said.

Yesterday’s Maine Sunday Telegram took a look at how some restaurants across the state are transforming in order shift from dine-in to take-out businesses.

Across the state, the story is largely the same: Restaurants are reinventing themselves at supersonic velocity, switching up their modes and models of operation, and especially, their menus.