With the goal of better serving customers in east Brunswick and Harpswell, Morning Glory Natural Foods plans to open a second location at Brunswick Landing in March of next year.
Owner Toby Tarpinian, whose mother started the business on Maine Street in 1981, said the new store will open in space formerly occupied by the Brunswick School Department’s REAL School. The building at 17 Seahawk Ave. is adjacent to Wild Oats Bakery & Cafe and Flight Deck Brewing, and will share a parking lot with those businesses.
The new space will include a butcher counter and a seafood counter, he said. It will have a bigger produce department and more refrigeration than the downtown store, but prices and “everything else” will stay the same.
Toby Tarpinian, who bought the business two years ago from his mother and stepfather, Susan Tarpinian and Craig Urquhart, closed on the new building in July.
The previous owner of the building, Tom Wright, had renovated a former Brunswick Naval Air Station building in 2018 to house The REAL School, which has since closed. Wright is retrofitting the space now to become the new Morning Glory.
Wright is CEO of TBW LLC, which also renovated the Flight Deck and Wild Oats buildings, among others at the former military base.
Susan Tarpinian opened Morning Glory Natural Foods in 1981. Urquhart joined the business after opening and then selling what was first another Morning Glory in Bath and is now the Bath Natural Market.
Toby Tarpinian moved back to Maine from California in 2010 and worked at Morning Glory for 13 years before buying the store from his mother and stepfather, who then retired.
“We’re just bursting at the seams,” he said of the 60 Maine St. store. “It’s so busy and the orders are so large and we can’t really expand this footprint.”
When the opportunity arose at Brunswick Landing, he said, “I just walked into this building and could just see the vision.”
The building will have 5,500 square feet of retail space, larger than the 4,000 square feet at the downtown store. It will offer a more modern, streamlined space, Toby Tarpinian said, and more convenient parking in the 136-space shared lot.
“I think a lot of people avoid the downtown store because of traffic and the tightness of the building,” he said. “We’re going to try to keep a similar experience with the new building, just with big, wide aisles.”
Demolition at the new building is complete, he said, and finish work is underway. Fixtures are due to arrive in October, “and then we’re off. And I don’t think any of that would have been possible without Tom (Wright).”
Morning Glory is “the right fit” for Brunswick Landing, said Dan Stevenson, executive director of the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, the public corporation set up to manage the transition of the base to civilian use.
“We have more than 1,000 housing units here and over 125 businesses with about 2,600 jobs,” Stevenson said. “That means a lot more people walking to the grocery store, and it’s closer for people coming up from Harpswell and people at the Cook’s Corner intersection who might want to come down here and go to Flight Deck or Wild Oats.”
In addition to Morning Glory, Brunswick Landing is seeing other growth. On Sept. 23, Mölnlycke Health Care broke ground on a $135 million expansion, Stevenson said.
In addition, Stratton Aviation just expanded into Hangar 4 and STARC Systems is building a 106,000-square-foot manufacturing facility.
“What we’re experiencing on campus is the businesses that are here are growing and we continue to reach out and recruit other industries that all make sense and can work together,” Stevenson said.
As Toby Tarpinian prepares to open the new store, he is honoring the dream his mother set out with 44 years ago.
“We’ll have a sign that says, ‘Supporting local since 1981.’ … I was 2 years old when she opened the store and I now have a year-and-a-half-old baby. Credit where credit’s due — it was her vision to carry it on.”
