Alec Sabina filled up his glass of water behind the counter before sitting down across from me in the last booth of Hot Suppa, greeting a regular perched at a stool, “What’s up, Big Donna?”
The Congress Street restaurant has become a local staple for breakfast and lunch since Alec, 25, bought the place with his brother almost three years ago, before graduating from USM.
“We’d been traveling across the country the summer before, taking road trips to New York, to the South. That was our market research, we tried to find hole-in-the-wall places. We tasted, we wrote, we looked for something Maine might need.”
The partnership seemed right. Alec would have his business degree in 2006, and his brother, Moses, who went to college for English and Latin in Tennessee, cooked all over the country. He was also an instructor of culinary students in New York before returning to Maine in late 2005.
The Portland-born duo lived apart since Alec was in the third grade. Big brother Moses left Maine high school and college while Alec stayed in Southern Maine and graduated from Gorham High, going on to USM. Post-road trip, the brothers began to look for a space to start a venture all their own.
It was during a Christmas break, as Alec was gearing up for his last semester of college, that the Sabina brothers stumbled upon the Friendship Café. The lease was up that January, and the café needed a new owner and a little love. They had 30 days to close on the deal.
Then and there, they rounded up investors and scrapped together their savings, purchasing the real estate with everything inside. They made trips to the Small Business Development Center in Portland, called upon friends, and scooped the place up.
“Even the cash register was full when we got there. We opened up as The Friendship Café and nobody knew. Slowly we introduced changes.”
The six months that followed, Alec describes as the most stressful of his life. “It was winter, I was commuting from my apartment in Biddeford everyday, I would get out of class and had opened this restaurant, working between every class.”
On the day he graduated from USM in the Spring of ’06, Alec worked in the early morning, left Hot Suppa, walked to the Civic Center for the ceremony, then walked back to the restaurant afterwards.
Hot Suppa has since grown into a successful and well-loved Portland eatery, serving about 100 people every day, up from their 30-40 customer day beginnings. The team looks back at their start as quite the ride, and quite the lesson. They look forward to growing and changing as they mature, “There’s a white board downstairs that we call the ‘projects’ board, here we keep track of what we’re working towards and what we need to fix and adapt.”
A project coming soon? Hot Suppa wants to open for dinner. “Eventually,” Alec says, noting it’s the question he’s asked most, “It was originally written in our business plan for the three year mark. Yet, these things change as you go along.”
The young entrepreneur plans to make Portland his home for the long haul. “I’d come home from those trips, cross the Pisquatiqa Bridge, and appreciate being in Maine so much.” He now owns a home in Portland’s West End.
The locals raves about owning a small business in the area, becoming personally involved in the community, making connections with people from politicians to the kids in the neighborhood.
The city is perfect for the brothers. The area, however lively, is the right fit.
Alec laughs, “Congress Street, Portland is a vibrant place where there’s a doctor sitting next to a lawyer, sitting next to a college student, sitting next to a bum. It’s a beautiful thing.”