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Updated: December 17, 2019

Bixby & Co. shop, cafe coming to Colby space in downtown Waterville

Photo / Maureen Milliken Bixby & Co. plans to open a cafe and retail shop at 173 Main St., Waterville, left. The building is owned by Colby College and across the street from Colby's Bill & Joan Alfond Commons, right, which opened in 2018.
By Maureen Milliken

Rockland chocolate maker Bixby & Co. will open a retail shop and cafe in a downtown Waterville building owned by Colby College.

The lease of the 2,500-square-foot space means that the building at 173 Main St. is fully occupied for the first time in more than 25 years.

Colby bought the building in 2015 and, after a $5.5 million renovation, leased a 3,500-square-foot storefront unit to Portland Pie Co. The top three floors of the 22,000-square-foot building are occupied by CGI Inc. and Colby offices. The building, one of the first the college bought in what has become a $70 million investment downtown, is across the street from Colby's Bill & Joan Alfond Commons.

The shop and cafe, expected to open in the spring, will partner with other southern Maine businesses. It will serve products from Brunswick-based Gelato Fiasco, Portland-based Coffee By Design and Bixby & Co.

Innovation, entrepreneurship

"We are thrilled to join the vibrant downtown of Waterville and to partner with the Waterville community,” said Kate McAleer, founder and CEO of Bixby & Co LLC, in a news release. “The commitment and leadership in driving economic development in Waterville are truly remarkable, and we’re very much looking forward to being a part of and supporting this exciting momentum.”

Photo / David Clough
Kate McAleer, founder of Bixby & Co. in Rockland, is a maker of organic chocolate bars sold in a range of supermarkets and specialty stores. This year, the company’s headquarters on Tillson Avenue, in the former O’Hara ice plant, has adopted a “Bean to Bar” theme to better explain to visitors the history of chocolate.

The company will continue to operate its manufacturing and retail tasting room in Rockland, McAleer said.

Bixby & Co.makes organic chocolate bars sold in a range of supermarkets and specialty stores across the country, and is the only bean-based chocolatier in the state. Its “Bean to Bar” theme at its Rockland headquarters, which explains to visitors the history of chocolate and how the company's products are made, launched last year. McAleer has won Top Gun and Greenlight Maine pitch competitions, as well as a $100,000 prize from the Tory Burch Foundation in 2016. She was also a 2014 Mainebiz Next winner.

Bixby & Co. is "an innovative, Maine-based company," said Brian Clark, Colby vice president of planning. "When Bixby was considering where to locate its bricks and mortar expansion, they received universal feedback that they needed to be in Waterville, where they saw opportunity to be a part of a growing and diverse culinary destination," Clark said.

Photo / Maureen Milliken
The Waterville Savings Bank vault will remain in space to be leased by Bixby & Co. at 173 Main St. in Waterville.

A building reborn

Colby had sought a tenant for the space on the corner of Temple and Main streets since the building opened in early 2018. The Money Cat, which planned to feature fried chicken and doughnuts, was announced as a tenant in May 2018, but the deal fell through.

The 116-year-old building at 173 Main St. was Waterville Savings Bank before being used for a variety of retail over the decades. It fell into disrepair in the 1980s, and was largely vacant in recent years. It still has a brass bank vault in the Bixby space, and McAleer intends to keep the vault as part of the cafe, the release said.

Garvan Donegan, director of planning and economic development, said the addition of Bixby & Co. to downtown Waterville "is additional evidence of how [Waterville] is becoming the epitome of an ideal Main Street community — in other words, a composition of remarkable small businesses supported by strong public-private partnerships and investments."

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