The Black Box Welcomes New Tenants to Washington Avenue: Moonday Coffee + Thicket Jewelry and Bay Bowls.
Left: Acai and Pitaya bowls from Bay Bowls; Middle: Moonday Coffee cart; Right: a Moonday cappuccino accompanied by Thicket earrings.
PORTLAND, Maine (April 12, 2022) - The Black Box on Washington Avenue, Portland’s first repurposed shipping container and retail incubator, is excited to announce the newest addition of new tenants this spring: Moonday Coffee + Thicket Jewelry, a community space to explore ferments and foods, and Bay Bowls, a grab and go smoothie and açaí bowl shop.
To serve as a home for small moments, Moonday is a micro coffee space, featuring an espresso bar, fine teas, and masala chai made in-house from scratch and is owned and operated by David Kessel. Thicket is minimal, botanical fine jewelry made by hand in Portland by designer Rebecca Perea-Kane. The shared space is an offering of craft, ritual, and things done by hand, with love.
Moonday is not new to the Portland coffee scene, as Kessel launched the brand as an espresso-based coffee cart serving drinks prepared with coffee beans from Speckled Ax last summer. In its new home within The Black Box, Moonday will be rapidly expanding their offerings throughout the changing seasons. Drink offerings to start will consist of espresso drinks, a few teas, and a very special traditional masala chai made from scratch in-house from a recipe David learned in India.
Thicket’s Perea-Kane is a native to New England and has studied and traveled all over the world, honing her art and design skills. Thicket pieces all begin with creating a mold of found and foraged botanical samples and natural objects. This mold is used in a process called lost wax casting which essentially creates perfect replicas, in solid fine metal.
“We've had the seedling of a dream to open a space together for years,” said Kessel. “Moonday and Thicket feel so much like extensions of ourselves, and we've been excited about the idea of creating a home for them. The Black Boxes offer such a unique opportunity to take a chance and try something out in an accessible way. The neighborhood is so sweet, and we're eager to plant ourselves here and tap into the amazing community of people and other small businesses in this awesome corner of town. It's the perfect spot to cultivate the things that are most important in our practices: craft, ritual, and relationship.”
For those up the coast, Bay Bowls is also not a new name to Maine’s smoothie shops. What launched in early 2021 in Brunswick is now making its way to Portland in The Black Box to serve up healthy, tasty, and fun smoothies and bowls. Bay Bowls also partners with local granola maker Grandy Oats. Sal and Soraia Matari, both born in Brazil, spent 37 years in New Jersey before relocating to Maine to be closer to two of their daughters at the start of the pandemic. They run their shop like they do their household, everyone who walks in is family.
“The business,” said Matari, “which was conceived of in a large family group chat, was inspired by the family’s youngest childhood experience drinking smoothies at the breakfast table. We were inspired by Merrymeeting Bay for the name, which is located in Bowdoinham, Maine.”
Moonday and Thicket are together occupying Unit 1 of The Black Box and will be open from Wednesday - Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Follow along and learn more via @moondaycoffee and https://shopthicket.com/.
Occupying Unit 5 and opening its doors on April 8, Bay Bowls will be open seven days per week, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Follow along for updates and learn more via the business Instagram page @baybowlsme.
The Black Box opened in November 2018 with leases designed to be flexible and to accommodate business owners who want space to test a concept or provide street-front retail space without a long-term commitment. Read more about The Black Box concept and mission here.
About The Black Box
The Black Box offers unique and flexible retail space in Portland, Maine's East End, in the heart of inner Washington Avenue. The single-story structure is built using repurposed shipping containers. Each of the five units is approximately 300 square feet, offering move-in ready space and 8’ wide double glass doors off the sidewalk. For more information, visit www.tbbwashington.com or follow the journey on Instagram or Facebook.
