New Morning Natural Foods at 50: From Biddeford Beginnings to the Next Generation
- Brick + Tides
- May 7
- 6 min read
Fifty Years, Still Moving
The first things Avery mentions aren’t big, not the anniversary or the history or even the fact that her family has been doing this for fifty years, but the smaller details that make up her day, like stickers, helping in bulk, and putting things back where they belong.
She talks about cleaning the stairs with peach spray and making sure they smelled right, the kind of detail you only notice if you’ve spent time paying attention.
Then, without much buildup or hesitation, she says she wants to take over the store someday.
No one laughs it off or redirects her, and the moment passes the same way most things do here, practical and unforced, as if it’s already part of the rhythm.
Where It Started
The store began in 1976 in Biddeford, in a small space that now holds something else entirely, and at the time it looked nothing like it does today, with barrels filled with rice, beans, seeds, and nuts, and little else to support them.
There were no supplements, no packaged systems, and no real understanding yet of margins or markup, just a belief that food and health were connected and that people might be willing to learn if someone took the time to show them.
On the first day, they made about $154, and the next day closer to $17, and for a while they were bringing in around $200 a week and trying to figure out how to double it, which at one point led to Sheila’s father, who owned Maine Cleaners, suggesting they turn the lights on more often, since they had been keeping some of them off to save money.
They were living in her parents’ basement then, with low ceilings, a floor that stayed wet in the spring, and no heat that first winter, all while expecting a baby.
They worked six days a week, Sheila taking two and Paul taking four, and for a long time there were no employees at all.
They weren’t talking about building something lasting.
They were trying to make it through the week.
Teaching People How to Use It
Before people understood what a store like this could be, someone had to explain it, and that work happened outside the aisles as much as inside them.
Sheila taught classes that ran eight weeks at a time, often lasting two or three hours in a single evening, where full meals were prepared from scratch and recipes were typed out carefully, measured down to the smallest detail, and packed ahead of time so people could follow along.
The work was demanding, but people came and stayed, and some came back again, drawn not just to the food but to the process of learning how to use it.
The store became more than a place to buy things; it became a place where people learned how to cook, how to think about ingredients, and how to connect what they were eating to how they felt.
At the same time, small products began to appear on the shelves, often from local producers who needed a place willing to take a chance on something unproven, and while some of those products stayed small, others didn’t, growing far beyond the store that first carried them.
Growing Up Inside the Store
For the kids, the store wasn’t separate from anything else, and most of their memories don’t distinguish between work and home.
Jeremiah, 49, remembers leaving food on the shelves and his mother finding it later, piecing together what had happened, while Ryan remembers getting up early, before most people were starting their day, to help receive deliveries, carry boxes inside, stock shelves, and price items by hand before heading back home, where he was homeschooled through eighth grade. Although he later attended a single class in the public school system, most of his education happened at home, with the store already woven into the structure of his days.
Ariel, 36, remembers something quieter, like drawing pictures in the store, making bracelets and trying to sell them to employees, and wanting to work the register but staying back because she was shy.
None of it felt unusual at the time, because it was simply where they were, and over time those small, ordinary moments added up to something that didn’t need to be explained.
Leaving and Coming Back
No one was told they had to take over the store, and that absence of pressure shaped what came next.
Ariel left, went to school, and eventually found herself working at a national grocery store in Nashville, where she stood behind a register and watched how a much larger system operated, and for a while she thought she might stay there after graduation.
Then something shifted, and she began to question why she was doing a small part of something elsewhere when there was something at home she already understood and could help build in a different way.
When she came back, the store was still small in a way people might not expect now, with only a handful of people covering entire days and everything close enough to manage without layers.
Now there are more than two dozen employees in a single location, with more across both stores, and roles that didn’t exist before, like HR, vendor coordination, and expanded ordering systems, have become part of the daily structure.
“I feel like the job just keeps adding to itself… to the point where my head is spinning a little bit.”
She says it without complaint, as part of what the work has become.
There’s still a part of it she gravitates toward, finding new vendors, especially local ones, and recognizing something early, before it has a chance to grow beyond its starting point.
The store has always had a place for that.
What It Took to Keep Going
The current Biddeford store now sits at 230 Main Street, a move up the road from where it began, and over time a second location followed in Kennebunk at 3 York Street, expanding what had once been a single-room operation into something larger.
From the outside, it feels established, but inside it continues to shift, shaped by the demands of the work more than any single decision.
For decades, every item in the store was priced by hand, and every sale meant removing and replacing tags one by one, a system that remained in place until recently, when newer systems finally replaced the pricing guns.
The systems changed, but the pace didn’t.
“If you’re self-employed,” Sheila says, “you can work any 80 hours you want.”
What Was Lost Along the Way
Sheila's husband, Paul, was part of everything in the early years, the person customers came to see and talk to, someone who listened more than he spoke and who helped define what the store felt like to the people who walked through it.
He passed away eleven years ago, just after a remodel that would later lead to significant growth, and there are things he didn’t get to see, including the expansion that followed and the way the surrounding community began to change again.
At the same time, there are things he left behind that continue to shape the store every day, in ways that don’t need to be named to be understood.
Another Beginning
The original Biddeford store is changing hands, not closing or disappearing but continuing in a different form.
In June, it will be sold to a young couple, Chase and Kelsey, connected by family, who have already spent more than a year working there, learning how it operates and what it takes to keep it steady.
They plan to rename it Cousins, and Sheila doesn’t want them to keep the original name because she wants them to have something of their own.
What Comes Next
The store has already started to move in more than one direction, with some of that change visible in new systems and expanded roles, and some of it happening more quietly.
Avery is nine years old, and she moves through the store with a sense of familiarity that doesn’t need explanation, helping in bulk, pricing items, and paying attention to how people move through the space.
When she talks about the future, she doesn’t hesitate.
“Yeah, I want to take over the store when I’m older because I really want to carry on the family business.”
Denver, six, is thinking about something else, the trucks and the part of the work that happens before anything reaches the shelves.
It isn’t something anyone has handed them.
It’s simply what they see. And they're already a part of it.
Visit New Morning Natural Foods in Kennebunk at 3 York Street and in Biddeford at 230 Main Street.
Visit them online at https://www.newmorningnaturalfoods.com.
Many thanks to Sheila Ouellette, Jeremiah and Jenice Ouellette, Ryan Ouellette, Ariel Peacock, her husband Daniel and their daughter Avery and son Denver for their time on Friday, April 17th in Kennebunk, Maine. Photo and interview by Cy Cyr.
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