Morning Glory Natural Foods opens second Brunswick store at Brunswick Landing

Morning Glory Natural Foods expanded its Brunswick footprint Friday with a second store at 17 Seahawk Ave. on Brunswick Landing, a move that adds jobs, widens food access in east Brunswick and Harpswell, and strengthens the redevelopment momentum at the former naval air station.

The new location gives the longtime independent grocer more room than its cramped Maine Street shop, along with better parking and new departments. Toby Tarpinian said the Brunswick Landing store was designed to serve shoppers who find downtown less convenient, especially customers coming from east Brunswick and Harpswell. The expansion also changes Morning Glory’s role in the local food market: the second store keeps the natural-foods mix that made the business familiar to generations of Midcoast shoppers, but it also adds a seafood counter and a butcher, broadening the appeal beyond a standard health-food store.

Morning Glory had already hired 16 new employees before opening, with more positions still to come. That hiring gives the expansion immediate economic weight in a region where small businesses often serve as both neighborhood anchors and job creators. The Brunswick Downtown Association scheduled a ribbon-cutting for 9 a.m. May 1 to mark the opening.

The new store occupies the former REAL School building, known as former Navy Building 223, next to Wild Oats Bakery & Cafe and Flight Deck Brewing. On Brunswick Landing, where housing and commercial projects continue to fill out a publicly promoted work-live-play redevelopment, another retail tenant adds to the cluster of food and service businesses that have helped turn the old base into a regional commercial center.

The opening also underscored Morning Glory’s long local roots. Susan Tarpinian started the original store in May 1981 after moving to Bowdoinham in 1978, following work in natural foods stores in Santa Cruz, California and studies in nutrition. Craig Urquhart later joined the business, and the shop became a fixture on Maine Street. The family celebrated Morning Glory’s 40th anniversary in 2021, a milestone that underscored how long the store had been woven into Brunswick’s daily life.

Craig and Susan Tarpinian retired and sold the business to Toby Tarpinian in 2023, but both were at the new store Friday greeting shoppers and pitching in, along with David Tarpinian. Store manager Haley Brown described the expansion as a continuation of the family’s legacy, not a replacement for the downtown shop. The original Maine Street store will stay open, since many customers still prefer its location and the history that comes with it.

For Brunswick, the second Morning Glory store is more than a new storefront. It is a sign that an independent grocer with 45 years of local history sees room for growth, and that Brunswick Landing is continuing to draw the kind of businesses that change how people shop, work and move around the town.