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 burg.