MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • January 24, 2021
John Herrigel, 41, founder and co-owner of Maine Oyster Co. in Portland and owner of Cape Small Oysters in Phippsburg, is working to restore some of the community lost to gentrification by investing in aquaculture and the public’s growing appetite for Maine-grown oysters. His parents own the old general store building and the wharf it sits on. Herrigel, who lives in the village of West Point, uses it as his oyster basecamp. He keeps his boats there for his oyster farm in Small Point Harbor, and sells oysters to-go, hosts shuck-and-slurp parties on the wharf in the summer, and leads hands-on boat tours of his oyster-growing operation and oyster farms in the New Meadows River. He’s a bridge between the new and the old, with a business that’s focused on a sustainable future from a place firmly rooted in the past.