Allen “Big Al” Cohen giving a thumbs-up in his store, Big Als Firework Outlet, at 300 Bath Road in Wiscasset, on June 6. Cohen owned Big Als Super Values for over three decades. Over the years, the longtime Wiscasset Planning Board member garnered celebrity status in Maine for his memorable television commercials for the store and his larger-than-life personality. (Johnathan Riley photo)
It was a combination of things that led to Al “Big Al” Cohen’s status as a Maine celebrity: his iconic suspenders, the tie-dye gorilla or tiger shirts, his larger-than-life personality, the firework store, and the popular commercials he was featured in about his store Big Al’s Super Values, which sat on Route 1 in Wiscasset for nearly 35 years.
While all these elements add to the mythos surrounding Cohen, of Wiscasset, the former whale-watching naturalist also spends his time volunteering for a food pantry and serving on the Wiscasset Planning Board.
Cohen, a third-generation retailer, was born in Queens, a borough of New York City, but grew up in Nassau County outside of the city. After high school Cohen attended Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting in 1973.
“The prerequisite for graduation was learning to spell the name of the university,” Cohen said, laughing.
However, Cohen quickly found that the profession wasn’t suited for him.
“I figured out the being an accountant was the first cousin of being a mortician,” Cohen said. “What do you do? You live in the past. You play with dead numbers, you’re not playing in the present, you’re playing in the past, always.”
While Cohen was in college, he and his brother-in-law started a retail business in West Babylon, N.Y., called Shane’s Circus of Values. By the time Cohen left New York in the 1980s for Maine, they had a dozen stores, but Cohen was burnt out after working “an unbelievable amount” of time.
“It was all consuming,” he said. “It just became this 24-hour grind.”
Cohen said during a midlife crisis that occurred after a bout of illness, he went to Australia and New Zealand to visit a friend for a month. Upon his return, he told his wife to pack her bags for Maine to get into the mini storage business.
“I thought it was a way to make a living without working too hard,” Cohen said. “My whole life I moved product and cases: it’s all boxes and physical work, and storage in the ‘80s was taking off and instead of buying something and selling it, I could built something and sell it.”
Cohen said he had visited Maine many times as an adolescent with the Boy Scouts of America, one of his fellow Scout’s family members had a place in Owls Head.
“I drove through this place as a teen and just fell in love with the area,” Cohen said.
Part of the draw to Maine for Cohen, aside from the allure of the coast, was the affordable property in contrast to New York and other places around New England.
Cohen found a mini storage property in Boothbay that became Big Al’s Self Storage in 1984. After one year of the mini storage business, Cohen said he was going “absolutely stir crazy,” and to fill his time in the summer he worked for tips with Capt. Bob Fish at Cap’n Fish’s Cruises in Boothbay as a naturalist on the afternoon boat.
“I was on a boat in the ocean every afternoon for three hours and it didn’t cost me anything,” Cohen said. “That was a home run.”
Cohen said that while he knew the mini storage business was going to do OK, he wanted to keep busy and open a seasonal retail store that would be open just four months a year.
Cohen opened Big Al’s Super Values in 1985 at 564 Bath Road in Wiscasset. The location was most recently home to Birches Coffee Bar & Market.
“We opened the store and right off we started to do business,” he said.
The intentions of a seasonal dissipated quickly and by the second year, Big Al’s was open seven days a week. While business was good, Cohen said it usually died around 3:30 p.m. once the Bath Iron Works employees had gotten out of work.
However, up the road was a restaurant that was drawing plenty of costumers around dinner time. Sea Basket Restaurant was doing incredible business, serving 400-500 dinners a night, so the day the property directly across the road from the business came up for sale, Cohen made an offer.
The property had its problems and needed land grading in order to put a store there, but Cohen saw the potential, and after three years, in 1989, the potential was unearthed with the opening of Big Al’s Super Values in the location that made it famous for decades.
“In that business I did unbelievable,” Cohen said.
Cohen expanded his business empire in 2012, opening a fireworks outlet, Big Al’s Firework Outlet, next door. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find enough help to run Big Al’s Super Values and in 2022, closed the doors, and the chapter of an iconic Maine business.
“I would have gone for another 10 years if I could have,” he said.
These days, Cohen said he spends his time as a landlord of the property, which has been Sweetz and More, New England’s largest candy store, since 2023, and overseeing the firework outlet.
Cohen knows that nothing good comes easy, and when he’s not tending to his firework store or mini storage business, he’s helping out where he can in the community with food pantry deliveries and donations for St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Wiscasset.
“I’m on top of the world now, and I didn’t expect to be,” Cohen said. “I’m here by the grace of God, I came here with nothing and I’ve done very well, so I can afford to give back.”
On the weekends, Cohen can be found at local farmers markets buying a few loaves of cinnamon swirl bread that makes “the best French toast.”
(Do you have a suggestion for a “Characters of the County” subject? Email info@lcnme.com with the subject line “Characters of the County.”)
