Celebrity spotting: Actor Matt Damon poses for a photo with The Juicery employee Irene Schlimmer outside the smoothie shop on Labor Day weekend. Photo courtesy of The Juicery

With fall comes change, and Maine’s plant-based food industry is innovating and closing doors in these areas. tough times for restaurants.

Fall got off to an auspicious start for Maine’s vegetarian business community, with actor Matt Damon stopping by vegetarian smoothie restaurant The Juicery in Kittery (which also has a shop in Portland’s Old Harbor) during Labor Day weekend. Damon even posed for a photo.

Her visit followed a Maine summer filled with vegan food, including an all-vegan community dinner at Portland’s First Unitarian Universalist Church and an all-plant-based wellness weekend at the Claremont Hotel in Southwest Harbor. The hotel’s restaurant, Little Fern, hosted guest chefs Babette Davis, owner of vegan restaurant Stuff I Eat in Inglewood, California, and Chris Tucker, owner of vegan bakery Betta with Butta in Los Angeles. The dinner the two prepared included corn soup with vegan crab, vegan lobster rolls, and Maine blueberry crumble.

Late summer also brought news of the closure of Akua, a Cape Cod-based maker of veggie burgers that launched in 2021. The company had used seaweed harvested in Maine to make its kelp burgers.

Veggie Life owner Jaime Shaw displays a banner at the Sea Dogs baseball stadium that proclaims her product as the official veggie burger of the team. Photo courtesy of Veggie Life

Veggie Life hits a home run with the Sea Dogs and new digs

The Sea Dogs named plant-based wholesaler Veggie Life the official veggie burger of this summer, and Veggie Life owner Jaime Shaw threw out the first pitch of the game at Women Owned Business Night in late August.

For several years, Veggie Life has been based in Freeport, behind the Mainely Custard scoop shop. The company recently sold this property. Shaw said its new headquarters in Wells, at 1732 North Berwick Road, provides additional space “to begin to grow its business and distribution.”

Renovations to the space, which formerly housed Richard’s Seafood, are expected to be completed by the end of the year. Inspired by a recent visit to chef Tal Ronnen’s vegan Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles, Shaw plans to host all-vegetarian pop-up dinners in the space next summer. Once the company’s operations move to Wells, customers will be able to pick up their online orders for burgers, chili and pesto there.

Free Pie and Vegetarian Thanksgiving Auctions in Dexter

Vegetarian restaurant and community center Gatherings 4 Main in Dexter has scheduled its fourth annual free Thanksgiving feast on Nov. 20 as a thank you to the community. The menu features holiday classics like mashed potatoes, stuffing, candied yams, green bean casserole, corn and several kinds of pies.

The restaurant is looking for volunteers to bake pies and donate them to a pie auction that will take place during dinner. Proceeds will be used to support the community center. Dinner is scheduled for noon to 1:30 p.m. at the restaurant, located at 4 Main St. For more information, call 207-924-2232.

A café becomes a farmers’ market center

A Coffeehouse, an all-vegetarian cafe in downtown Waterville, has partnered with the Maine organization FarmDrop to become a pickup location. Shoppers go online to farmdrop.usselect A Coffeehouse as their pickup location, then choose the farmers’ market produce they want. The website coordinates with local farms to offer a variety of vegetables as well as garlic, dried beans, herbs and pickles. Collection takes place on Friday from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Soymilkmaid sells vegan baked goods

Vegetarian cook and food writer Elise Schloff has been selling her vegan desserts at pop-ups this summer and fall, including at Rabelais Books and Onggi in Portland and Frinklepod Farm in Arundel. Schloff often uses foraged ingredients and draws inspiration from natural foods cookbooks from the 1960s and 1970s. At Rabelais in August, for example, she made budino di riso brown rice with tamari caramel, sweet blackberries and a carob Oreo cookie. Find future pop-ups and more details on soyamilkmaid.square.site.

Vickie’s Veggie Table in Biddeford closes

The all-vegan Vickie’s Veggie Table in Biddeford has closed its doors. Owners Vickie Charity-McGuirk and her daughter, Melanie McGuirk, wrote on social media that they were “grateful for the two years you all gave us. Vickie’s Veggie Table was an incredible experience for both of us and we are so happy to have been able to bring healthy vegan options to downtown Biddeford.

The owners said they tried to sell the business, located at 299 Main St., Suite 101, before closing in October, but had no viable offers. The restaurant and juice bar opened in 2022. The owners plan to write a cookbook with stories and recipes from the restaurant and its customers.

We double dare you to skip this scrumptious vegan chocolate mousse cake from Holy Donut owner Leigh Kellis. Photo by Leigh Kellis

The owner of Holy Donut makes and sells vegan desserts

Leigh Kellis, owner of Holy Donut, a vegan establishment, has started selling her vegan chocolate desserts in bulk. Find them at Novel Bookstore and Cafe at 643 Congress St. in Portland. Kellis told me she’s particularly “obsessed” with vegan chocolate mousse cake, which she makes frequently. During her final weeks in business, Kellis made vegan chocolate desserts for Vickie’s Veggie Table, owned by her cousin Vickie Charity-McGuirk.

Maine’s first vegetarian food map

Anecdotal evidence suggests that more vegans and vegetarians are vacationing in Maine, but the state tourism agency offers little or no tourism information aimed at them. To remedy this, I created the Maine Vegan and Vegetarian Food Map. The map received over 4,500 visits in less than a month, which I believe indicates a high demand for this information. It lists more than 80 vegan and vegetarian restaurants, hotels, farms, bakeries, food producers, historic sites and related businesses. Visit the map on bit.ly/MaineVeganMap.

Avery Yale Kamila is a food writer who lives in Portland. Contact her at [email protected].

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