FROM THE STORY:

By 8 a.m. on any given Saturday, the bakeries of Portland, Maine, are already in full swing.

Outside of one in early August, with the smell of fresh bread and buttermilk sweetening the air, customers in line debate whether to order a classic croissant or the French pastry kouign-amann. Across town, another line stretches down the block. A cyclist pedals away with baguettes sticking out of a backpack. After splitting a bagel at one shop, a young couple from the Midwest maps out their next two bakery stops: a coffee shop that everyone seemed to have recommended, then one last pastry before lunch.

The city of roughly 70,000 people is home to an astonishing concentration of bakeries whose work rivals anything found in far larger cities. That didn’t happen by accident. Pioneering bakeries raised the standard decades ago.

In Maine, once considered the “bread basket of New England,” the grain farming economy peaked in the 19th century. During the Civil War, the state’s grains even helped feed the Union Army. But as the West became more populated at the turn of the century, grain farming and production went with it. Many Maine farmers refocused on other crops, such as blueberries, corn, and potatoes.

But in the 1980s, bakers started trying to source local wheat. Matthew Williams was one of the earliest pioneers of Maine’s grain scene. A former grain agronomist, he added a milling operation to his farm in the late 1990s. And over the last two decades, farmers, bakers, and organizations such as the Maine Grain Alliance have helped revive the state’s grain economy. The result was more than just better bread. It gave ambitious chefs an affordable path to entrepreneurship. Customers bought in, learning to appreciate obsessive craftsmanship.

Today, visitors arrive with an appetite for naturally leavened breads, Japanese-inspired viennoiserie, and rustic loaves made from Maine-grown grains. They drive home with back seats full of sourdough loaves and scones.

Longtime Portland baker and chef Krista Kern Desjarlais remembers arriving in Portland in the 1980s, when the city was full of artists, cooks, and scrappy entrepreneurs who simply figured things out for themselves. The rents were low enough that people could afford to experiment, and creativity often mattered more than polish.

READ MORE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/19/magazine/portland-maine-bakeries-bread/?p1=StaffPage

FROM THE STORY: Via Cannuccia, a small Italian restaurant in Dorchester, has become one of Boston’s toughest tables, and a favorite among the city’s restaurant industry. Now its chef-owner is betting that there’s room for another Cannuccia, but this time in the form of a bakery, coffee shop, and evening wine bar.

Stefano Quaresima, whose 40-seat trattoria has become a destination for the Roman cooking he grew up with, plans to open Bottega Cannuccia in the former Homestead Cafe space in Fields Corner as soon as December. The 30-seat space will shift gears throughout the day: Italian coffee, pastries and sandwiches during the day, followed by apertivo, wine and small plates by night.

The expansion comes as Boston’s Italian restaurant scene is getting bigger and more corporate, while Quaresima is purposefully small and entirely self funded. The new restaurant is also the product of an unusually community-driven process, with the landlord asking neighbors to weigh in on what should fill a vacant storefront.

“I really want to create a space outside with some tables and chairs, like a small bistro you’d find in Paris. That’s the picture I’ve had in my mind,” said Quaresima in an exclusive interview with the Globe.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/17/business/via-cannuccia-dorchester/?p1=StaffPage

FROM THE STORY:

Panera Bread will relocate its headquarters from the St. Louis area to Massachusetts next summer, bringing the corporate offices of yet another major company to Greater Boston.

Panera will move to an undisclosed space in Weston in July 2027, according to an internal memo sent to employees Monday by CEO Paul Carbone that was obtained by the Globe.

The move, Carbone wrote, “will allow us to fully align our teams” around the company’s turnaround plan, an effort launched last year after years of slumping sales and operational missteps.

Panera — a chain long known for its breads, mac and cheese, and lunch deals — has more than 2,250 locations around the US and Canada. The relocation comes as the company is attempting to engineer a major turnaround in the fast-casual industry. Once a defining brand in the bakery-cafes category, Panera has struggled in recent years with high food costs and staffing.

Customers have said the higher prices also came with smaller portions and degraded quality. Stores, half of which Panera owns with the rest owned by franchisees, are often short staffed. The company, owned by private equity parent JAB Holding Co., has cycled through multiple executives and recently paused their plans for an initial public offering.

READ MORE IN THE GLOBE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/28/business/panera-bread-hq-boston-st-louis/

The team behind Steel & Rye is betting that locally-owned businesses can help revive Milton Village.

FROM THE STORY:

MILTON — For nearly a century, locals came to the Colonial Revival-style brick bank building at the corner of Adams and Eliot streets to stash their money. Beginning this week, they’ll walk through its doors for freshly-boiled bagels, local tomatoes, wild florals, bottles of Burgundy — and, if the developer has it his way, a renewed sense of Milton Village.

Two Pence Market opens Wednesday inside the restored 1929 landmark after months of anticipation. The project brings together restaurateur Dan Kerrigan and culinary director Brendan Joy, both of the nearby Steel & Rye restaurant, with local developer Joshua “JD” Wild, managing partner of real estate firm The ELEVATED Companies.

“We didn’t really need another restaurant around here... We needed a market like this,” said Kerrigan, who opened Steel & Rye in an old and largely empty auto dealership in 2012.

Perched up on a hill overlooking Dorchester’s Lower Mills, Two Pence Market will be part café, part neighborhood grocer where shoppers can pick up prepared meals, local produce, pantry staples, and fresh pasta. Or they can linger over breakfast, lunch, coffee, or scoops of Toscanini’s Ice Cream before browsing through a collection of wine and spirits to bring home. But behind shelves of groceries is a broader bet that the locally-owned businesses — not the highest-paying commercial tenants — can help revive Milton Village.

READ MORE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/28/business/two-pence-market-milton/

Korean skincare, Japanese housewares, collectable toys, and other Asian retail concepts are drawing shoppers and filling vacant storefronts

By Alexa Gagosz, Globe Staff

For the past five years, one of Downtown Crossing’s biggest storefronts sat vacant after Forever 21 shut down. This spring, it found a new tenant. But it wasn’t another traditional clothing or department store. Instead, Teso Life, a two-story Asian lifestyle retailer that sells everything from Korean beauty products to snacks, moved in.

A few doors down, Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo opened in a space that had been empty for two decades, drawing crowds and a taiko drum performance on opening day. On Newbury Street, shoppers can explore Muji’s minimalist Japanese housewares, browse toys at MoreFun, duck into Memory Shop for a Korean-style photo booth experience, and, soon, stop for a matcha latte at the pop-up-turned-café byChae.

These high-profile openings reflect a larger shift in Boston: Concepts that once held appeal mostly among East Asian immigrants, Asian Americans, and other cultural enthusiasts are becoming mainstream.
The new entrants to Boston retail have been urged on by landlords who are eager to revive empty storefronts. And they’re finding an eager audience among a young generation of consumers raised on social media, anime, K-pop, and international cuisine.

“Boston’s retail market definitely needed some new blood,” said Peng Jia, who owns MoreFun, a toy mecca, in Back Bay and Cambridge, with a third location on the way in Allston.

Read more here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/28/business/asian-stores-retail-boston-newbury-street/

Harry Hare’s, a British-inspired ale house, will take over historic Beacon Hill Pub space

BY ALEXA GAGOSZ, GLOBE STAFF

FROM THE STORY:

The historic, no-frills Beacon Hill Pub space — one of the neighborhood’s most recognizable barrooms and a neighborhood institution that officially closed in 2022 — is set to reopen as a British-inspired restaurant and pub this fall.

Veteran Boston restaurateur Patrick Lyons will open Harry Hare’s early this fall. Gone will be the former Beacon Hill Pub’s hard-driving dive-bar reputation — replaced by a quieter, polished dining room modeled after traditional English alehouses.

READ MORE IN THE LINK: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/27/business/beacon-hill-pub-harry-hares-boston-pub/

Plus, Ralph Lauren is opening a coffee shop in Seaport, a locally owned clothing store that specializes in Y2K clothing opens in Allston, and more retail news

From the story:

At first glance, it’s just a vintage clothing store. But on any given morning, under a painted mural of Tupac on the ceiling,** **customers at Nostalgia Vintage Café in Somerville might be sipping specialty lattes, eating bowls of cereal, browsing racks of 1990s concert T-shirts, renting a DVD, or inspecting collectors’ items shipped from Japan.

Owner Philip Kahan, bright-eyed with a wide smile and covered in tattoos, is eager to take just about anyone through his eclectic shop. The atmosphere is “loud,” even with the soft sound of music humming in the background.

There’s color everywhere, from a pile of butterfly hair clips and bear-shaped Bearbrick figurines to sneakers on floating shelves and purple neon lights that line the back wall.

Kahan, who grew up in Acton as the youngest of seven children, moved to Los Angeles to pursue a music career, eventually earning a gold-certified single for his songs “Savannah” and “Be Cool.” After nine years, he returned to New England to be closer to family. First, he opened a similar store in Portland called High Society, which focused primarily on his own vast collection of vintage tees.

“I had four bedrooms filled of just my clothes,” he said.

Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/21/business/retail-news-boston-vintage-ralph-lauren/

From the story:

Toni Fanning has been selling everything that’s supposed to cleanse negative energy at her shop, Ritual Arts, for the past 42 years. But no number of crystals and bundles of sage can put a halt to her current misfortune: She must pay four times more in rent, which her business can’t afford, or move out by the end of August.

“This is my home. This is my life,” said Fanning. “Depending on where I end up hopping to, it’ll be like I’m starting all over again.”

Ritual Arts is one of about two dozen businesses that will either have to pay much higher rents or vacate their spaces inside the enormous Gordon Building in Allston. Located at 149-175 Harvard Ave., the historic two-story property was sold in late June by its longtime owner to an entity tied to Alpha Management Corp., a Boston landlord with a massive portfolio, for $12.25 million.

For decades, the Gordon Building has served as one of Allston’s hubs for independent businesses on a prominent block, housing everyone from tattoo artists to nonprofits. The building’s former owner kept rents low, even as surrounding areas spiked, giving smaller businesses a spot near the busy neighborhood center. The crisis facing tenants there now is accelerating fears that one of the neighborhood’s last bastions of local retail is disappearing.

Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/17/business/allston-gordon-building-alpha/

FROM THE STORY:

BARRINGTON, R.I. — After founding Feast & Fettle, which has become a fast-growing meal delivery company in the region, Maggie Mulvena Pearson’s next venture is deliberately small.

For the past year, she’s hunted for antique Portuguese plates, refinished century-old floors, and designed a 700-square-foot coffeehouse inside a home first built in 1922 in Barrington, a peaceful coastal suburban town along Narragansett Bay. The result is Aldeia Coffeehouse, a Portuguese-inspired café.

Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/metro/ri-aldeia-coffeehouse-portuguese-coffee-barrington/

Packed clubs, fuller cash registers, and few problems have given a new momentum to a proposal that could reshape Boston nightlife

By Alexa Gagosz, Globe Staff

It was well after 1 a.m. and roughly 100 scantily clad clubgoers snaked down the block outside of Legacy, the LGBTQ+ nightclub in Boston’s Theater District. With about 400 people downstairs, the club had long hit its capacity, but no one seemed eager to give up their place in line.

Down Warrenton Street, more crowds spilled onto the sidewalks outside Icon and Venu. IDs were already pulled out. Vape clouds wafted overhead. Groups in stilettos and tight dresses passed around cigarettes before disappearing back onto sweat-soaked dance floors, while others summoned Ubers to chase one more stop before closing time.

Normally, Boston nightlife would already be winding down. By 2 a.m., last call is over and the lights come up inside these beat-thumping establishments.

But not this summer.

Massachusetts temporarily pushed closing times to as late as 3 a.m., if municipalities opted in, through the end of July for World Cup, America 250, and Sail Boston celebrations, allowing nearly 200 bars and restaurants to stay open later. The experiment has boosted sales, filled seats and dance floors, and begun to chip away at Boston’s reputation as a city that shuts down too early. Now, it’s prompting a debate, with some city leaders proposing that the later last call should outlive the summer.

Read the rest of the story here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/09/business/boston-bars-3-am-closing-time-permanent/

FROM THE STORY:
Dear Annie, a popular natural wine bar in Cambridge, is shutting down later this month, with owner Lauren Friel citing operational challenges, motherhood, and a changing restaurant scene in Greater Boston that has become more corporate.

“In the past year, I’ve watched many of my favorite food businesses around the world close — mostly scrupulous endeavors founded by people who could be described as real ones,” wrote Friel in an Instagram post on Wednesday morning.

Friel, who also owns the wine bar Rebel Rebel in Somerville, said she’s read multiple articles “declaring that food’s golden era is at its end.” She also cited recent Globe coverage about the proliferation of steakhouses and a recent story about how nationally- and internationally-known luxury chains and hospitality groups are flooding Boston.

“I’ll just say this: This current trend is not why I devoted the past 25 years of my life to this industry,” said Friel.

Dear Annie’s last day will be July 31. The space will be used for bespoke events starting sometime in September that Friel will also lead, she said.

read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/08/business/cambridge-wine-bar-dear-annie-closing/

FROM THE STORY:

It was just a few days ago that the partying mood in Cambridge was high, after the city allowed World Cup fans to stroll in public with a cocktail in hand, a move that finally suggested a more laissez faire attitude in a state known for its restrictions on alcohol.

Now for the buzz kill.

Cambridge regulators are considering an overhaul of the city’s liquor laws that swing in the opposite direction, tightening the rules so much that restaurant and bar owners warn they could be strangled by the most restrictive drinking codes in the country.

The proposed regulations drew little public attention until Lauren Friel, owner of local wine bar Dear Annie, posted an Instagram video walking viewers through a 30-page proposal that would even limit customers to a single drink every half hour.

Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/24/business/cambridge-liquor-license-rules-restaurants-bars-strict/?s\_campaign=8315:varf

FROM THE STORY:

Less than two weeks after abruptly shutting down all 12 of its restaurants and kiosks, Boston-area chain Clover is coming back to life.

The vegetarian restaurants will reopen five locations on Tuesday for lunch service after receiving a last-minute investment from a backer that the company will not identify. The revived cafes will include Clover’s Prudential Center and Federal Street locations in Boston, as well as its Central Square, Inman Square, and Kendall Square cafes in Cambridge, said Clover chief executive Julia Wrin Piper.

A sixth location, at the Harvard Science Center store on Oxford Street in Cambridge, is poised to reopen June 22, said Wrin Piper.

Clover’s management stunned customers in late May when it announced it would close all 12 of its restaurants and kiosks on May 28 after 17 years in business, citing inflationary costs and economic challenges. But days later, Wrin Piper said a “mission-aligned investor” stepped in with a last-minute infusion of cash.

Wrin Piper declined to identify the investor or disclose the size of the investment. She described this person as a “new investor” to Clover, but who had supported the company as a customer.

read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/08/business/clover-reopen-boston-cambridge-store-locations/

FROM THE STORY:

BRISTOL, R.I. — During the COVID pandemic in 2020, Nic Dion started imagining what the restaurant he grew up in could look like in the future.

S.S. Dion, which his parents opened in 1983 as a Bristol staple for traditional fixings of local seafood and steak, was at a pivotal moment. Like almost every other restaurant in America, business was slow and they needed to survive. He had studied music production at Rhode Island College, but was unsure of his own future. His parents — like many in the restaurant business with their children — had discouraged him from taking his time in the kitchen too far and making it a career. But after** **the restaurant became sustainable again, Dion had another vision for his parents’ legacy restaurant: rebuilding and reinvention.

He became obsessed with driving around, searching for any local farm or fisherman on a dock and bugging them to see if they, too, wanted to help him with his vision.

Read the full story here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/04/metro/ri-bristol-ss-dion-seafood-restaurant/?s\_campaign=8315:varf

FROM THE STORY:

Ayr Muir founded Clover with one food truck near MIT and spent 15 years turning it into one of Greater Boston’s best-known fast-casual chains. On Tuesday, after two years watching from afar, Muir said he found out the entire chain would close through an email sent to board members.

“I’m devastated,” said Muir, whose only remaining connection to the company is being a minority shareholder and board member.

To Muir, the email represented the end of an experiment he began in 2008 with the single food truck and a dream to disrupt Boston’s food scene by serving millions of sustainable, vegetarian meals as efficiently as a burger joint.

Clover rode a rising trend of health-conscious dining into a rapid expansion, opening brick-and-mortar stores throughout the region. But as interest in meat alternatives faded in recent years, the company was unable to maintain its lofty vision.

On Tuesday, Clover’s executives said it would close its 12 remaining quick-serve restaurants and kiosks for good at the end of business on Thursday after more than 17 years.

Changing consumer tastes were only one factor in the collapse. Muir and the company’s current management team blamed Clover’s demise on a restaurant economy that has been reshaped by remote work, inflationary prices, and rising operating costs that have affected all of Boston.

But Clover’s demise, investors say, was foreshadowed for years. Documents show a visionary company squeezed by mounting financial pressures as management focused on growth.

Ingredient costs, the company said in a newsletter to customers Tuesday night, are 30 to 50 percent more now than just two years ago.

About 170 people will lose their jobs, and leave a hole in the restaurant scene for diners.

“It really seemed like the future of food,” said Kelly Andreoni, a longtime vegetarian and Clover fan starting in its early days. She recently returned and found the experience disappointing. The restaurant was dirty, she said, and quality wasn’t there. “We knew it wouldn’t be long before they closed.”

Justin Alpert, a Boston University professor and restaurant architect, said he regularly went to Clover for falafel. When other fast casual chains popped up that served similar food, ingredients weren’t from local farms, he said.

“Unfortunately, sustainable practices and use of quality products come at a literal cost,” said Alpert. “They chose to go down with that ship in lieu of selling out.”

Muir exited as CEO in late 2023. (He said he resigned; Clover chief executive Julia Wrin Piper said he was terminated.) A month later, the company filed for bankruptcy protection — emerging the following year with what it described as a clean slate and a desire to open even more stores.

READ MORE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/05/27/business/clover-restaurants-closing-boston/?p1=StaffPage

from the story:

Growing up in New Hampshire in the early 1990s, Phil Ng watched his two older brothers disappear into imaginary worlds while playing games like Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering, a card game where players act as powerful magical wizards who cast spells and summon creatures to defeat their opponents.

Three decades later, in 2021, he became an engineer for Wizards of the Coast, the Washington-based Hasbro subsidiary that makes those games, to help build the flashy new digital version of Magic.

What once felt like a dream job, however, has more recently morphed into something entirely different. Ng and more than 100 of his colleagues, many of them lifelong fans of the game, are now trying to unionize — hoping to push back against what they describe as a series of aggressive and unnecessary measures by Rhode Island-based Hasbro.

“It’s a dream job for any gamer,” said Ng, who lives in the Boston area. “But [the company] knows it.”

Employees like Ng have seen rounds of layoffs at Magic even during lucrative years for what has become a key profit center for Hasbro. Wizards, the subsidiary that makes the game, has also mandated that its remote employees, now scattered around the country, return to the office in Washington state or risk their jobs.

read more here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/05/28/business/hasbro-magic-the-gathering-developers-union/

from the story:

After a decade operating under CVS Health’s umbrella, the nation’s largest nursing home pharmacy provider is poised to change hands.

A bankruptcy court in Texas on Wednesday approved the sale of CVS’s Omnicare, an underperforming long-term care pharmacy network, to GenieRx Holdings LLC in a deal valued at $250 million.

David Azzolina, Omnicare’s president, called the sale “an important milestone” for the company.

read more here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/05/14/business/cvs-omnicare-sale-genierx/?s_campaign=8315:varf