Bangor Native Expands Box of Maine Business to New Huge Warehouse in Brewer

The pandemic made sales go through the roof!

Daniel Finnemore was only 28 years old when he started an online business, Box of Maine. The concept was simple - to send friends, family, or visitors of Maine a little bit of Maine. When he opened in 2017 he was working out of a 400-square-foot office in Orono. He just recently moved to a 7,000-square-foot warehouse in Brewer.

Mainebiz interviewed Daniel who is a family man running a small family-owned business. A very successful one. He was doing about 6,000 orders a year when he started, but then Covid hit and the border to Canada was closed. Canadians missed their Maine whoopie pies, Moxie, Humpty Dumpty chips, wild blueberries - you name it, they missed it and wanted it.

Daniel told Mainebiz,

We had so much product in there and we went from fulfilling 6,000 boxes per year to 20,000 boxes per year. We had customers all over the world. When the border shut down, people from Canada could no longer come to Maine and they were ordering mass quantities of food and gifts from us. We shipped to Mexico, Australia, Europe, and Japan.

Even though the pandemic has eased up, demand is still there. It's too late for people - they've had a taste of Maine and they need more red hot dogs!

So what exactly is a Box of Maine? They want you to know they aren't another subscription box that you get the same stuff every month and keep forgetting to cancel. They let you create what goes in your box from over 100 Maine items from 40 Maine businesses.

They even have pickled fiddleheads, pickled eggs, and gallon jugs of maple syrup. Now that's some serious missing of Maine.

It's an exciting and scary time for Box of Maine. Inflation has changed the price of everything, but they remain optimistic. There is a ribbon cutting and grand opening today.

If you are in the area, you should definitely stop by and meet the people giving a little bit of Maine to the world.