Urban Farm Fermentory confirms: Yes, we're shutting down production
Photo / Alexis Wells
Urban Farm Fermentory, at 200 Anderson St. in Portland, will be the new home of Blue Lobster Urban Winery.
After the February announcement that the Urban Farm Fermentory tasting room would pour its last fermented drinks, customers were left wondering about the fate of products sold in supermarkets.
Now Eli Cayer, the owner and founder of Urban Farm, has told Mainebiz that he will shut down wholesale production at the East Bayside site. The product had been sold in Whole Foods, Hannaford and other markets.
“It is time for this project to move on from this area,” said Cayer. “The brand could no longer sustain itself; there just weren't enough sales. We could not sustain the business, especially after COVID, because we lost a lot of our customer base.”
Cayer told Mainebiz that he had sent out his last crates to his Maine distributors and planned to sell off the brewing materials. He also plans to sell leftover products through the end of the month.
Last month, Urban Farm Fermentory announced via social media that it would close on Feb. 24. To celebrate its 14 years in East Bayside, the popular establishment went out with a bang, serving up two days of music, art and its full variety of fermented beverages.
Cayer founded Urban Farm Fermentory in 2010 with the vision of exploring seasonally available flavors fermented with local sugar sources.
“I had already been in the building for a few years because I started the Maine Mead," said Cayer. "I worked here, and so essentially, I was the first producer in the area for about five years. UFF was never designed to be a sort of whatever is going on in the beer world; it was just fermentation of all things flavored with seasonal ingredients."
“After 14 years, it became clear that it wasn’t going to work here any longer, so I started to look for the right tenants for the space. I started talking with Blue Lobster Urban Winery, my friends and they got excited about moving into the tasting room space.”
Blue Lobster Urban Winery is remodeling its new space at 200 Anderson St., after seven years at its founding location at 219 Anderson St. The new site will allow for expanded production, a larger tasting room, more parking and outdoor seating. Blue Lobster closed the old tasting room on March 22.
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