Coffee By Design employees in Freeport bid a heartfelt farewell to customers Tuesday afternoon as they prepared to vacate their L.L. Bean storefront. Both employees and patrons said they were sad to say goodbye to their favorite coffee house after 15 years of service.

Coffee By Design owner Mary Allen Lindemann said the community has embraced them like family and it is hard to leave. She said they began their journey at L.L. Bean with a small kiosk smack dab in the middle of the retail section and eventually moved downstairs, where customers flooded the space to enjoy a variety of beverages and luxury couches, making it part of their daily routine. CBD has three other storefronts in Portland and wholesale coffee production.

Lindemann said CBD is leaving its Freeport space two years earlier than anticipated because L.L. Bean is ahead of schedule for its multi-million dollar campus makeover.

“We hope we will have the opportunity to be back with L.L. Bean at some point, because 30% of our customers were L.L. Bean employees; we are going to miss them,” Lindemann said.

Debbie Doyle of Freeport said she would miss CBD for its convenient location and for its “personal touch.” She said unlike corporate chains like Starbucks, the staff at CBD always made her feel welcome and took special care of their customers.

Freeport High School student Al Dawson said he’s bummed he and his classmates will have to find a new place to hang out during school breaks.

Lindemann referred to her Freeport shop as a “gathering place” that became crucial as residents navigated COVID. She said when people began working remotely, they would set up their laptops at CBD and socialize at the end of their workday. She said people don’t realize how pivotal a local coffee shop can be when it comes to friends gathering and romantic partners meeting for the first time. Lindemann said that recently, a customer wrote to her asking to buy one of the couches in her shop because it is where he and his wife had their first date.

Going forward, she said the goal is to make sure her employees are taken care of and was happy to say most of them would be joining her in Portland.

“Every store is like a child, so I’m just thinking maybe this child is going to college. That’s how I’ll think about it. It will come back at some point,” Lindemann said.

CBD’s last day in Freeport is May 31.