From the Allagash Swamp Devil hanging on the wall to the coyote hat worn by owner Robert Berg, there’s a sense of fun at Bear’s One Stop in Newport, Maine.

Berg drove past the store for 20 years while he operated a t-shirt business. He told himself that if the store ever came for sale, he would buy it. The convenience store went up for sale in 2016 at a good price, Berg said, and he offered the full asking price. Later, “I worried about some title issues and got cold feet and wanted to back out.” As a result, he ended up getting it for 25% less than listed.

“I have some fun. I make a little money. I keep it casual. I keep it loose. It’s a relaxed atmosphere. I do it with customers, vendors and employees. Our employees have fun,” he said.

Kitchen Creativity

Berg feels that creativity in the kitchen is important. “Every once in a while, the cooks might have a failure. But we don’t get many complaints. We actually get plenty of requests. Our customers will let us know one way or the other what they want and like,” he said.

Walking into his store, Berg said that he will have no clue what’s on the menu that day. “It depends on the cook. The crew decides what they want to do. I have my crew out there and let them go at it. They don’t have to run it by me. I trust them,” he said.

According to Berg, a lot of culinary rules are broken at his store. Consistency is one, but it seems to work at Bear’s One Stop. “Our whoopie pies are homemade, so they are not standard. Clerk A makes them one way today and Clerk B makes them another way tomorrow. They will be different,” he said. The whoopie pies stand out in another way, too: They weigh about 10 pounds. “We are not good with portion control,” Berg said with a laugh.

“The in-house meat market accounts for a quarter of our inside sales,” he said. The hamburger meat is ground fresh daily. “Even in the meat market, customers can find fun, creative items. For example, for Valentine’s Day, hopeless romantics can buy heart-shaped, his-and-her ribeyes. You put two ribeyes together and they end up shaped like a heart,” he said.

If a menu item isn’t quite what Berg thinks it should be, it disappears immediately. He sees the ability to make quick decisions as an advantage over competitors.

‘There’s No Limit to Pizza’

Berg said that he doesn’t believe there’s a limit to what a good cook can do with pizza. And he shows it in his menu.

For one specialty pizza, fresh fiddleheads are a topping. A Maine favorite, these ferns are harvested in March and April. “People will ask if the fiddleheads are up. … Mainer folks really love them,” said Berg.

What about the flavor? “It’s fern. You can boil them or fry them in a pan with butter and garlic. Do people like the fiddleheads or the garlic and butter?” he said, adding, “I had escargot once and it was drowned in garlic and butter. I tasted mostly garlic and butter. Fiddleheads are like that. I’ve eaten plain fiddleheads. I don’t think you could eat a lot without something on them.”

Another regional favorite is the Red Maine Hot Dog Pizza. In Maine, bright red hot dogs are a local favorite and have been around for over 160 years. “I thought they needed to be on a pizza,” Berg said.

“We take a traditional red hot dog and put eight of them on a pizza. Depending on the cook, we either lay them out whole or chop them up,” he explained. “We add cheese and onions.”

“We used to do a 'Big Mac' Pizza, and some people gave us grief,” Berg said. “So now I call it an Almost Big Mac Pizza.” The pizza is made with hamburger meat, onion, lettuce, tomato and thousand island dressing.

Big Portions and Unpredictable Offers

Customers come in like clockwork for the lunch specials.

On Fridays, Bear’s One Stop offers brisket. “Brisket is fussy to smoke. We used to do it in-house for St. Patrick’s Day, but our supplier does it perfectly,” Berg explained, adding, “It’s our No. 1 requested item. We should probably do it more than one day a week.”

Every Wednesday is pasta day, but the details vary week to week.

“We sometimes do chop-chop suey. We make it here with our seasonings,” Berg said. Other times, the cooks will make lasagna, which is made with freshly ground beef. And the portions are big.

‘It’s a Hurry-Up World’

“Customers don’t want to wait. It’s a hurry-up world,” said Berg. He’s added some improvements to enhance the customer experience.

“We had to upgrade the fuel tanks in 2021-2022. They went from pumping eight gallons a minute to 10 gallons a minute. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you have lines at the pumps on the Fourth of July, it makes a difference,” he said.

Once the new tanks were in, he decided to redo the parking lot. “While we were upgrading the pumps and tanks, it seemed like the right time,” he said.

In 2019, the store upgraded its POS system. "I’m proud of that. It’s fast and modern with up-to-date encryption. It’s user friendly and the staff likes it. I did a lot of homework on it,” he said. “It’s one of the best things I’ve done since I bought the store. Our old systems were an absolute dinosaur. The new system is fast.”