 |
Gail Montgomery, owner of The Well Tempered Kitchen, stands with some of the empty shelves and remaining inventory near the end of her “retirement” sale. (D. Lobkowicz photo) |
Buy this photo |
By Dominik Lobkowicz
After two recent moves and a tough winter, the Well Tempered Kitchen has ended its 20-year run in the Midcoast.
Gail Montgomery, who has owned and operated the high-end kitchen goods shop, has decided to close the store after a difficult winter.
Montgomery has been in the business of selling kitchen gear since the mid-1970s when she started working at the Hudson Valley Bazaar in Nyack, N.Y.
Montgomery bought out the business and brought it to Waldoboro in 1994, renaming it The Well Tempered Kitchen. She moved the business to Camden about two years ago but found
business had been better in Waldoboro and so moved back last fall.
At the time Montgomery said the response to the store’s relocation to Waldoboro had been very positive, but the winter ended up being very stressful.
“It was hard, it was just hard,” Montgomery said in an interview April 9.
Montgomery believes the cold, snowy, and icy winter kept folks at home and saving their pennies to help heat their homes.
“It was a tough one for everybody,” she said.
Though she had a good run in the Midcoast, Montgomery decided she wanted to move away from the stress of running her own business and is taking a job at the Farnsworth Art
Museum’s retail store in Rockland.
Montgomery indicated working at the museum store would be a positive change of pace. She is very familiar with retail given her years of experience, “yet I can come home at the
end of the day and leave it there,” she said.
A “retirement” sale started at the store April 1 and was planned to run through April 22, but Montgomery was doubtful she had enough items left to stay open until then.
The inventory that had filled the shelves of her retail space quickly sold, which was “fantastic,” Montgomery said.
The sale went so fantastically that by her interview with The Lincoln County News April 9, Montgomery’s inventory was down to just about one table-full and she expected
to close for good on April 12.
“I’m pleased,” she said.
Though she had been trying to sell her farm – where she lives and the store was located – for some time, Montgomery has now taken the property off of the market.
Montgomery said she has found a tenant to rent the commercial space as a living space: a young man, a farmer, who will grow vegetables and raise ducks and chickens on the
property.
