Shaun Knight, co-owner of Maine Bay & Berry.

Christa Stofferahn, and I am co-owner with Shaun.

[music playing] The meaning behind the name of the business Maine Bay & Berry, there's bays and the ocean.

It brings in the ocean side of the business, like all of our seafood.

And the Berry is that Maine is actually known for blueberries.

So I grew up in an area that was right on the coast, where you knew everybody.

You're probably related to half the people that were there in some direction or form.

It was a fantastic place to grow up.

Shaun and I met when we were both working at Smeal, up at Penn State, in the business college.

He was teaching and I worked for the executive MBA program at the time.

And he was a recommender for one of the incoming students.

And that's how we crossed paths.

For a number of years, I actually would go back and forth to Maine to visit my family.

And what was interesting about it was I would always bring coolers up and say, hey, does anyone want lobster, some scallops, or some blueberries?

And inevitably, I would get people saying yeah, that'd be great.

That'd be great.

So I'd always bring back coolers full of all these items.

And I wouldn't do it to make money.

I would just sell it for what I paid for it.

But I want to bring a flavor of Maine back to Central Pennsylvania.

And then Christa at one point said, have you ever thought about making this a business because people seem to really want it?

That last time that he went up, which would have been July 2017 after we got back, I really felt like we had talked about it all the way up and back down, that this is a business.

We can do something with this.

Where are we going to be?

It was almost 12:15 in the morning coming back from Maine.

And we had looked over to our left coming down Shiloh Road.

And the produce stand that was there was empty.

And historically, for more than 20 years, it always sold produce.

And we looked at each other and said, hmm, maybe that's our spot.

The first Christmas of 2017, it was really cold out.

I remember the week before.

The wind chills were minus 30.

And we did not have heat.

We had ice on the inside of the building.

So we're trying to sell seafood in this place, and we were freezing.

It was so cold.

And we had a line out the door all day in 30 below weather.

It was mostly the men that were coming out.

The wives kicked them out.

And said, you go out in the cold and stand out there.

And they stood out there and it was like a party.

They all sat there and had conversations.

They didn't care about how cold it was.

But they wanted that seafood.

And at that point, Christa and I looked at each other and said, there's something to this.

If you were to ask me seven years ago, would we end up where we are today?

I'd probably say no.

I thought we had something, but the growth was it came in multiple stages really quickly for us.

And we weren't expecting it.

And so we really had to think about how we did what we did and why we did it.

A year and a half later or so, then COVID came.

I remember one of the grocery stores, somebody had said they're out of chicken.

And we started getting phone calls.

People wanted fish or like, do you have fish?

Can we pick it up?

Or can you deliver it?

The one thing that we also saw, especially on social media, a lot of businesses that were food related and based were having to close because they weren't able to stay open.

They were considered a grocery store.

So they were having to close up.

And they were just starting their businesses.

And so we reached out to everybody and said, hey, if you want to come to our store, bring your products here.

We will let you take up a space.

Customers who come in can see it.

And we're not going to charge you for that.

We just want you to keep your business going.

Keep it growing.

And then after all of COVID is over with, if you want to stay, you're welcome to stay, and we can talk about that.

We really like the idea of supporting local, whether it's here or in Maine, which was really important.

We do have local made products here as well.

But most of the items you see behind me are from small businesses in Maine.

I think part of the reason for the Maine part for me is it's part of it's an obligation I feel I have personally, continuing to give back to the people in Maine.

Because we have 40 different businesses, typically I think represented in the store in any given time, most of them are from Maine.

And so that gives me some sense of pride knowing that we're helping families and helping businesses that are 750 miles away from here that are working really hard to try and make it go for them and their families.

It's part of who we are and wanting to be and support through local businesses, whether it's where he's from or where it's where I'm from was important to us.

[audio logo]