AROOSTOOK COUNTY, Maine (WAGM) – Aroostook County is full of local businesses, from restaurants to boutique stores. This holiday season, many communities pushed residents to their downtowns to shop, whether that was through Caribou’s Small Business Saturdays or Presque Isle’s Main Street Mania. It seems that these efforts have paid off.

“For a small town, I think it’s been a really good Christmas season for the small businesses down here,” says Lance Lovewell, the owner of Ruska Coffee Co. in Caribou.

Brianna Gerrish, a customer service representative at 58 & Maine in Caribou, says they have been very busy since they opened in November.

“On Black Friday we had a good influx of customers,” Gerrish says. “A lot of people love to do their shopping in person, I know a lot of people are shopping online as well but there are definitely people that seek out businesses to go to and go shopping as an event.”

Restaurants were also busy this December, both with people coming in to eat and with selling gift cards.

“It’s been a great season from Thanksgiving right up until now,” says Fred Grant, the owner of Market Pizza in Houlton. “We’ve seen an increase over last year which is great to see, and gift cards have been flying right out the door.”

“We are already up another 50% over what we did last year in the month, so things have really been going well,” says Jane Torres, the director of board at The County Co Op in Houlton. “We really hit it hard in November trying to order new product into the store so we could really attract people, and it seems to have worked.”

Gift cards were a top seller this year for local businesses, along with Christmas decor and clothing items.

“The Christmas season has been good, not quite as good as last year, but it has still been good,” says Debbie Sutherland, the owner of Brambleberry Market. “I sold a lot of home decor items, a lot of greenery, a lot of dips and cheese ball mixes, and especially right before Christmas last week, so it was pretty busy.”

Coffee shops and cafes were also busy this season, according to Patti Jo Thompson, the owner of the Maine Bean and Tea in Caribou.

“Christmas season was really good for us,” says Thompson. “We sold lots and lots of gift certificates so I’m kind of hoping that’s going to push our name out there a little bit more.”

In fact, one local coffee shop had to make homemade gift cards to keep up with demand.

“Overall I think we sold about 700 gift cards in two weeks, we ran out,” says the owner of Ruska Coffee Co. “We had some people that do all of our crafting for us actually made up some wooden gift cards for us so we could sell those while we were waiting for other ones to come back in.”

The extra boost during the Christmas season helps many businesses stay open year round to meet the needs of the community.

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