On any given morning, the sweet aromas of cinnamon and baking bread can be smelled throughout Ocean Park, while residents can be seen lining up outside Ocean Park Subs and Grocery hoping to get a taste of the shop’s famous cinnamon buns.

They’ve been lining up for 14 years, since Lisa Kidd purchased the tiny store and transformed the dining landscape of the little seaside community.

“I love feeding people, always have,” Kidd, a Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, native who calls Ocean Park her home away from home, said. “I have four kids and my happiest times are when their friends are around the table.”

When Kidd purchased the store all those years ago, it was a standard deli. When she devised the idea of selling cinnamon buns, she never anticipated the shop would garner such attention for the breakfast treats.

“It’s funny because we do so many other things,” Kidd said. “It was always a deli, but it was never a breakfast place. … I just felt that’s what was needed around here. “

And clearly, it’s what people wanted: on a typical day, Kidd said, she and her crew of workers will serve up to 500 or 600 of cinnamon buns to hungry vacationers. On the weekends, when the store is its busiest, anywhere from 800 to more than 1,000 pastries fly out the door.

Last summer, Kidd recalls, she sold about 38,000 cinnamon buns.

Kidd admits to purchasing the dough – which she bakes in-house – to keep up with demand, although she does make the orange glaze herself.

“One Sunday we did 1,168 cinnamon buns out of this place … I physically couldn’t do that overnight,” Kidd said. “It kind of makes me laugh.” While the shop is best known for its breakfast, Kidd is proud to offer Ocean Park residents and vacationers a wide range of items, including her popular grilled lobster rolls, homemade muffins and a wide range of groceries.

“I think it’s your corner store, kind of. It’s also a dry town – there’s no beer or wine or cigarettes or anything – so it’s this family friendly, anything you need, on the corner (shop),” Kidd said. “I try and have a little of everything.”

Despite all her success, running the little store has not been without its challenges.

“The hardest thing is getting people to work,” Kidd said.

She said she often hires her children’s friends when they are teenagers and they will work until they graduate college. Because of this, she said, the store has an inherent family atmosphere.

“I’ve always been able to hire kids I know, so I’ve never once had to worry about the trust issues or anything you worry about in business,” Kidd said. “That part’s been really nice. I’ve had great kids working for me.”

Work was also made easier for the shop’s crew this summer, when Kidd purchased a large convection oven, opened a second register for credit cards and expanded her workspace by adding an additional service counter and food preparation station.

“My kitchen basically doubled. That has totally changed my life,” Kidd said. “It used to be we’d come in at 2:30 or 3 a.m., and I’d get 750 (cinnamon buns) baked because we were doing it in residential ovens. This year, I bought a big convection oven, and it changed everything.”

With many positive changes this year and an easier workload, Kidd said she just wants to enjoy running the shop now that she’s gotten a handle on the business.

“We’ve made so many changes this year that I feel incredibly content with where it is. I feel like we’ve figured it out this year, and then you sit there and say, ‘Well, why did it take me 14 years to figure out a second register?’” Kidd joked. “All these things this year, it’s like ‘Why didn’t we do it before?’ And now it feels like it’s right where it needs to be.”

Above all, Kidd is happy to serve the people she has come to love, as friends, a community and as family.

“I can’t believe it’s me that gets to do this, is what I feel like every day. And I think I bring that in general to the people that have grown to love it,” Kidd said. “I have always said this since I bought it: I feel like it’s an honor to run this little store.”

Ocean Park Subs and Grocery is located at 69 Seaside Ave. in the Ocean Park community of Old Orchard Beach, and is open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. It will close for the season after the Columbus Day weekend.

— Staff Writer Alan Bennett can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or [email protected].