Left to right, Caitlin and Sam Reiche – the new owners of Town Landing Market – with son Ford Reiche, and Rachel Taylor, Arlin Smith and Andrew Taylor, at the closing sale of Town Landing Market this month. Smith and Andrew Taylor of Big Tree Hospitality will run the business, a beloved market that is more than a century old. Photo by Justin Unger

FALMOUTH — In the summer of 1947 or ’48, high school student Tina Noyes worked at the ice cream counter at Town Landing Market. Now, more than 70 years later, her grandson Sam Reiche and his wife, Caitlin, have bought the property.

Although Noyes, who still lives in Falmouth, can’t quite remember which year she worked there, she does remember the customers.

“The whole area was pretty much summer cottages, and they would come in for ice cream sundaes,” Noyes said.

For over 140 years, Town Landing Market has been a Foreside Road fixture, and the new owners say they hope that won’t change.

Although the Reiches bought the property, Caitlin’s brother, Andrew Taylor, and the company he co-owns, Big Tree Hospitality, will be leasing the store and running the business. The Reiches will manage the land and the upstairs rental apartment. Big Tree Hospitality owns several nationally known restaurants: Eventide Oyster Co. in Portland and Boston, and The Honey Paw and Hugo’s (which has been closed since March 2020), both in Portland, as well as a commissary kitchen in Biddeford. Just last year, Big Tree bought Higgins Beach Market, a seasonal market in Scarborough. This will be the company’s first year-round marketplace.

“We love spots like this and want to keep spots like this in operation and preserve them for exactly what they are and what they represent to communities,” Taylor said. “We’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of stories we’ve heard from locals and people that have grown up in and around that market.”

The marketplace, which sits in an old, quirky building just up a steep hill from Falmouth’s public beach and boat launch, is beloved by locals, some of whom, like Corky Clarke, are wary of things changing.

“It’s been a great anchor for the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s really a place we look forward to going to. It’s one of the reasons we like being here.” He praised the store’s convenience – many in the Falmouth-Foreside neighborhood, now a mix of both summer and year-round homes, can walk or bike to the market. And he’s often surprised by the range of good things the small store stocks. 

The market building in 1915 or so, around the time gas pumps were added to the business. Photo courtesy of the Falmouth Historic Society

Taylor and his Big Tree Hospitality partner Arlin Smith are keeping the current staff, whom Smith praised as “incredible.” Taylor also wanted to reassure customers that the lobster rolls at Town Landing will remain distinct from Eventide’s famed but unconventional brown butter lobster rolls. Small changes, such as decor, some products, and a few menu additions, are inevitable, but “on the whole expect nothing to change,” Taylor said.

“We still want it to be the central hub of the community and the Falmouth community,” he continued. “It’s a sort of generational place that people grow up with and interact with in many different ways. I think that’s our biggest goal, way beyond any, you know, financial goals or, you know, food service or, you know, whatever we put on the shelves.” 

The market on state Route 88 is believed to have opened in 1880. Over the decades, it has gone through a number of ownership changes, most recently before last week, in 2015 when MaryBeth Bachman bought the store from Dan Groves. 

Ford Reiche, Sam Reiche’s father and a Falmouth Historical Society historian, said that the market has evolved dramatically in its more than 100-year lifespan. In 1907, it was a fruit and sweets store, H.J. Poland, Fruit and Confectioner. By 1916, the times were changing: it had been renamed Calden’s Market and was equipped with gas pumps. Calden’s also sold camera film and ice cream. In the late 1940s, the Bernard family gave the market the name it still has today. And some 40 years ago or more, it got the famous, or maybe infamous sign that boasts of “Fresh Native Ice Cubes.” Whatever the changes, and there have been many, Town Landing Market has always been situated squarely at the heart of the seaside neighborhood.

“I’m just excited to watch what Big Tree does with the market and watch as it continues to thrive in Falmouth,” new market owner Caitlin Reiche said. “I have three kids and my brother has four kids, and maybe they’ll all work at the market together someday just like it was Sam’s grandmother’s first job.”