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 sector is both breaking new ground and closing doors in these tough times for restaurants.

Autumn kicked off auspiciously for Maine’s vegetarian business community, with actor Matt Damon stopping at the vegetarian smoothie spot The Juicery in Kittery (which also has a shop in Portland’s Old Port) during the Labor Day weekend. Damon even posed for a photo.

His visit followed a Maine summer stuffed with vegan eats, including an all-vegan community dinner at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland, and an all-plant-based Wellness Weekend at The Claremont hotel in Southwest Harbor. The hotel’s restaurant, Little Fern, welcomed guest chefs Babette Davis, owner of the vegan Stuff I Eat restaurant in Inglewood, Calif., and Chris Tucker, owner of the Betta with Butta vegan bakery in Los Angeles. The dinner the pair cooked included corn soup with vegan crab, vegan lobster rolls and Maine blueberry crumble.

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

Veggie Life owner Jaime Shaw gestures to a banner at the Sea Dogs ballpark that proclaims her product the team’s official veggie burger. Photo courtesy of Veggie Life

Veggie Life hits home run with Sea Dogs & new digs

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

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For the last few years, Veggie Life has been based in Freeport, behind the Mainely Custard scoop shop. The company recently sold that property. Shaw said its new headquarters in Wells, at 1732 North Berwick Road, offers additional space “to start scaling up the business and distribution.”

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

Free vegetarian Thanksgiving & pie auction in Dexter

The 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 pie.

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

A Coffeehouse becomes farmers market hub

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A Coffeehouse, an all-vegetarian coffee shop in downtown Waterville, has partnered with the Maine organization FarmDrop to become a pickup location. Shoppers go online to farmdrop.us, select A Coffeehouse as their pickup spot and then choose the farmers market products they’d like. The website coordinates with local farms to offer a variety of vegetables as well as garlic, dried beans, herbs and pickles. Pickup is on Fridays from 2 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 takes inspiration from natural food cookbooks of the 1960s and 1970s. At Rabelais in August, for instance, she made brown rice budino di riso with tamari caramel, sugared blackberries and a carob Oreo cookie. Find future pop-ups and more details at soymilkmaid.square.site.

Vickie’s Veggie Table in Biddeford closes

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

The owners said they attempted to sell the business, which was located at 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 compile a cookbook with stories and recipes from the restaurant and its customers.

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

Holy Donut owner bakes and sells vegan desserts

Leigh Kellis, the owner of the vegan-friendly Holy Donut, has started wholesaling her vegan chocolate desserts. Find them at the Novel book and coffee shop at 643 Congress St. in Portland. Kellis told me she is particularly “obsessed” with vegan chocolate mousse cake, which she makes frequently. For its last several weeks in operation, Kellis baked vegan chocolate desserts for Vickie’s Veggie Table, owned by her cousin Vickie Charity-McGuirk.

Maine’s first veg food map

Anecdotal evidence suggests that ever more vegans and vegetarians vacation in Maine, but the state tourism agency offers little to no tourist information geared to them. To remedy that, I’ve created Maine’s Vegan & Vegetarian Food Map. The map got more than 4,500 visits in less than a month, which I think indicates high demand for the information. It lists more than 80 vegan and vegetarian restaurants, hotels, farms, bakeries, food producers, historical sites and allied businesses. Visit the map at bit.ly/MaineVeganMap.

Avery Yale Kamila is a food writer who lives in Portland. Reach her at avery.kamila@gmail.com.

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