Rising Tide Co-op Opened: 2009 in current location; 1978 previously Owner: cooperatively owned Previous Tenants: assorted non-grocery tenants Cooperative: National Co-op Grocers Location: 323 Main St, Damariscotta, ME Photographed: August 16, 2019 Damariscotta is a very small town of about 2200 people about halfway between Portland and Bangor, but even this tiny town has three full supermarkets. The local independent store is Main Street Grocery , and directly across the street from it is the Rising Tide Co-op. A Hannaford is just down the street, and we'll see that Monday. Although Rising Tide has been in business since 1978, the co-op moved into this building -- formerly a motorcycle dealership! -- in 2009. You can see in the exterior picture at the beginning of this post that it truly is directly across the street from Main Street Grocery. But the stores are very different. In New England, there's a very strong culture of community co-op grocers, a...
Main Street Grocery Opened: 2022 under current ownership; 2018 previously Owner: Greg Snyder Previous Tenants: Yellowfront Grocery (1990-2018) Cooperative: Associated Grocers of New England (previously IGA) Location: 5 Coastal Marketplace, Damariscotta, ME Photographed: August 10, 2019 Constructed in 1990 as the Yellowfront Grocery (with a yellow front -- or at least a partially yellow front ), this approximately 15,000 square foot supermarket became Main Street Grocery in 2018 . Local business owners Jane and Gary Gravel took over the supermarket when Yellowfront closed, then sold it again in 2022 . The new owner, Greg Snyder, has switched the store's supplier from IGA (supplied by Bozzuto's) to Associated Grocers of New England. When I visited in the summer of 2019, it was still owned by the Gravels and still an IGA member. The store isn't that old, but has an old-school, familiar feeling. You enter in the front-left corner and walk across the front to p...