Clam Juice and Lobster Bisque Turned Around a Tiny Maine Town

Thirty people in Whiting, Maine (population: 480) near the border with New Brunswick work for a local seafood canning company that's been around since 1917. The business almost went under before Mike Cote, a former food executive, bought it in 2003. Now, Bar Harbor Foods sells chowder, lobster bisque, canned wild herring fillets, and clam juice online and in national supermarkets such as Whole Foods Market and Stop & Shop. Even better for the local community, the company offers full-time jobs in one of Maine's poorest counties where more than 20 percent of its residents live in poverty.

The success of Bar Harbor Foods is the kind of economic-development story that is all too rare in rural areas. But there's no reason it couldn't serve as a model for others. Cote didn't just breath new life into the company on his own. The achievement wouldn't have been possible without the help of Coastal Enterprises, a Maine community-development corporation and financial institution that lent him roughly $600,000 at a crucial early stage. Cote used the cash to buy new equipment to update the seafood canning factory, the only one still operational in Maine. The investment agreement worked out better for Cote than trying to take out a loan through a bank. "You don't have anybody knocking on your door immediately to get their money back," Cote says.