Wild Oats Bakery completes move from downtown Brunswick to Brunswick Landing
COURTESY / WILD OATS BAKERY & CAFE
Wild Oats Bakery & Cafe, a longtime fixture in downtown Brunswick, moved this week to a new building at Brunswick Landing.
COURTESY / WILD OATS BAKERY & CAFE
A drone view of the new 20,000-square-foot home of Wild Oats Bakery & Cafe at Brunswick Landing.
A year after announcing plans to move from downtown Brunswick to Brunswick Landing, Wild Oats Bakery & Cafe has opened the doors of its new location and will have the official ribbon cutting on Friday.
The store is at 166 Admiral Fitch Ave.
A ribbon cutting — billed as “safe, quick, socially distanced” event — will be held at the site on Dec. 11, at 1 p.m. Town officials, the Brunswick Downtown Association and the Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber will be there. The chamber will live stream the ribbon cutting on its Facebook page.
The store is expected to bring in a morning-focused customer and offer coffee and baked goods to Brunswick Landing's more than 2,000 employees. It will eventually have seating for up to 200 people once COVID restrictions are lifted. Wild Oats also adds to the employee count, with a staff of 40.
"We are thrilled that Becky and the Shepherd family has made this kind of investment and commitment at Brunswick Landing," Cory King, executive director of the Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber, told Mainebiz in an email. "With over 2,200 people now employed on Brunswick Landing, one business we were lacking was a customer-serving eatery.
"The infusion of a successful company like Wild Oats into the Brunswick Landing community gives employees a place to have coffee meetings, gives businesses a place to grab catered lunches and attracts more customers to this thriving area of Brunswick thanks to their brand reputation. In speaking with the owners while touring the new space, the unlimited parking, single level kitchen storage and new equipment will be game changers for their vendors, customers and staff."
Outgrew downtown space
Wild Oats Bakery & Cafe was started in 1991 by David and Becky Shepherd, selling, all-natural baked goods made from scratch. It started in a small space in downtown Brunswick’s Tontine Mall, which it eventually outgrew.
The bakery's decision to move started two years ago. The Shepherds wanted to expand from their 8,000 square feet at the downtown mall, while at the same time the owners of Tontine Mall planned a redevelopment that, it appeared, allow for additional space.
Marshall Shepherd, the son of the owners, told Mainebiz that the family looked at alternate sites downtown, including Fort Andross and the old firehouse, and was not initially attracted to the idea of moving to Brunswick Landing.
But Tom Wright, a co-founder of Wright-Ryan Construction who is now a real estate investor, convinced the Shepherds that Brunswick Landing needed retailers, restaurants and services, like day care. Wright envisioned "a second downtown," Marshall Shepherd said.
"That was the first time we considered building new, but now we have space and grass and trees and things we didn't have before," he said. "We're right next to Flight Deck [Brewing]," providing another food-related business.
Wright-Ryan Construction, which is based in Portland, managed construction of the 20,000-square-foot site.
At Brunswick Landing and the surrounding Cooks Corner area, Wild Oats is part of a building boom, with new retail, commercial and residential space being built or fitted out.
"We view Wild Oats as a very much needed establishment on Brunswick Landing to support the growing on-campus business and residential communities, in addition to off-site users," said Steve Levesque, executive director of Midcoast Region Redevelopment Authority (MRRA), which manages Brunswick Landing, a former Navy air base.
Levesque said Brunswick Landing has plenty of capacity, including roads that can accommodate more traffic. But in this case it may actually reduce the need for on-campus businesses to drive elsewhere for food or coffee.
"The centralized location of Wild Oats on the Brunswick Landing campus, will actually reduce vehicular traffic to a degree, as many users will now be able to walk to the facility from their place of work, school or home, rather than needing to drive off-campus for this type of experience," Levesque said.
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