Damariscotta Pumpkinfest and Regatta Executive Director Jed Weiss leans on a larger than normal pumpkin on Friday, Oct. 4 in Newcastle. When hes not organizing Damariscottas largest festival, hes working at Colby and Gale in Damariscotta in service dispatch or restoring cast iron cookware. Weiss formerly co-owned King Eiders Pub in Damariscotta where he was also the bar manager. (Johnathan Riley photo)
Jed Weiss, of Bristol, believes that community is a result of everyone doing their part.
“You can’t just exist, if the community is going to thrive, you need to be committed to it, and at least do your part of whatever that may be,” he said.
Evidence of Weiss living this idea can be found on his resume. He’s currently the executive director of the county’s largest festival, Damariscotta Pumpkinfest and Regatta and is the former co-owner of King Eider’s Pub in Damariscotta.
Weiss is originally from Erie, Pa., which is located along the southern shore of Lake Erie. There his family owned a retail business that sold supplies to churches and religious organizations. He said watching his parents run a business, and working with them, helped him develop a strong work ethic.
“Dad was all for coming in and learning the business,” Weiss said.
The family business has a small manufacturing component to it where they made bottle lights for churches: 12-inch candles poured into colored glass containers. Whether he was painting the glass or pouring the wax, Weiss remembers being involved in the process of making those candles and making 15 cents per case of 12 bottle lights.
“The more you do the better you get and if you think about it, in any job, the better you do or the more you produce, hopefully, you move up, whatever it is,” he said.
Weiss worked with his parents until he went to Bethany College in Bethany, W.Va. where he met his eventual wife, Cynthia, on the first day of school. Weiss pursued a computer programming degree, but after a semester, he found the coursework was not to his liking and he switched to pursue a degree in business management.
“I was like, ‘I am not going to sit in front of, and write, computer,’” he said.
Weiss returned home in 1987 and began work at a plumbing wholesale company as the inventory manager and eventually the manager.
Cynthia and Weiss married in 1995. The couple now has two children, Spencer and Maggie.
Weiss and his family resided in Erie until 2003 when they made the move out to Maine to join Cynthia’s sister and brother-in law, Sarah and Todd Maurer, in purchasing King Eider’s Pub, a Damariscotta restaurant founded by Larry and Sherry Schneider in May 1996.
The Maurers, according to Jed Weiss, were looking to get out of the corporate world and hoping to purchase a restaurant or delicatessen and asked Jed and Cynthia Weiss if they’d be interested in joining them.
Jed Weiss said Cynthia’s family owned a cottage on Biscay Pond and was familiar with the area from vacationing there, so he cognizant of the tight-knit community the family had bought an established business and the goal was to contribute.
“We knew coming in that we were coming into a small town, small community, and the first thing we did was (say) ‘don’t change anything.’ Community was always really important to us as a group and obviously to the business,” he said.
While Jed Weiss said he got his work ethic from his parents, he said owning a restaurant turned him into the self-described people person he is today.
“The day we opened the door (to Eider’s) all of a sudden everyone was coming through the door. It was like, okay, you have to do this. You have to figure this out. Obviously, somewhere in there, (being an extravert) was part of me,” he said.
Weiss said he found himself doing more and more activities that put him in front of people, such as hosting a popular trivia night through the restaurant where he would speak weekly to crowded room of 200 people.
“I was not an extrovert, I was not someone that would do anything I would do now, I would not have done in my younger years,” he said. “I found that part of my personality through that business: the comfort with being in the community and being out front of something, whether it’s the business or now, Pumpkinfest, it came from that.”
When Damariscotta Pumpkinfest and Regatta started in 2006, Jed Weiss said it was an easy decision for him and the King Eider’s Pub ownership to become a part of it.
“We’re sitting on the 50-yard line of Damariscotta with Eider’s and they’re going to put together this crazy festival in downtown, so we all got involved,” he said. “At one point, I think Sarah (Maurer) was the treasurer, I was doing the newsletters, Cynthia was doing the merchandise, and Todd was organizing all the food and sponsors. The whole family was in on Pumpkinfest.”
After longtime Pumpkinfest organizers stepped down in 2019, there was a need for someone to step into the role of spearheading the event. Jed Weiss stepped into the role as co-chair because he felt his connections within the community would be helpful to the festival and in 2020 he became the executive director.
The Weisses and the Maurers sold King Eider’s Pub in 2022 after they found buyers in Scott McArdle and Damon Waltz, both former employees. Jed Weiss said the reason behind the sale was the family was getting older and trying to slow down.
“The restaurant business is a young person’s world and it was time to start cutting back and the pub was the most logical spot,” he said.
Currently, Weiss is working in the service department at Colby and Gale Inc. in Damariscotta.
Jed Weiss said his wife keeps asking him when he’ll be done volunteering his time as executive director, and he doesn’t know, but he feels a sense of obligation to the community since it was so good to him and his family for the nearly 20 years he owned and operated a restaurant in the heart of downtown Damariscotta.
“I don’t know, I may never (stop), who knows?” he said, laughing. “I’m at a point in my life where I don’t own a business. I’m still working, but I want to give back, you know… I guess I feel like I need to keep it going in the community.”
Weiss said the thing business owners lose sight of most often is the good that happens within the community.
“If you’re always looking for the bad, guess what? You’re going to find it. Go look for the good,” he said.
Since selling the restaurant Jed Weiss has been able to get back to hobbies such as hunting and fishing. When he isn’t attending to his duties with Pumpkinfest or Colby and Gale, he is also running his side business, Mainely Iron, where he refurbishes and sells antique cast iron cookware.
According to Jed Weiss, his hometown is known for cast iron pans made from the company Griswold between 1890 and the 1950s. While he isn’t “a huge cook,” collecting the pans was a way he could be reminded of where he grew up.
“I always loved that there was a big logo on the back (of the pans) that said ‘Griswold’ and ‘Made in Erie, Pa.’ so it was kind of like my little connection, even though I’m in Maine and loving my life here in the Midcoast, to that,” he said.
For more information about Mainely Iron, or to contact Weiss about cleaning cast iron, follow him on Instagram @mainelyiron.
(Do you have a suggestion for a “Characters of the County” subject? Email info@lcnme.com with the subject line “Characters of the County.”)
