Back Story

Penny and Addison Chase moved to Maine in 1969, taught school, bought land in Freedom, built a house, and started farming.  Phoebe and Meg Chase were born in the mid-1970’s and helped out on the farm throughout their schooldays. The farm followed different wholesale tangents—poultry, beef, dry beans, hay, cucumbers, peppers, and winter squash—for twenty years.  Phoebe and Meg (with considerable support from Penny and Addison) began retail market gardening as a summer job when they were 13 and 12, respectively.  With each passing year, as skills and ambitions mounted, the scope of the project broadened.  Phoebe started baking.  Penny and Addison both became more involved.  By the mid-1990’s an idea began to circulate among the family that a bakery and produce market in Belfast would be a apt extension for their production goals.  In 1998, the family pooled their resources for the down payment on the historic Oddfellows Hall in downtown Belfast. The next year Freddy Lafage joined the family and the business venture in partnership with Meg. On July 1, 2000, Chase’s Daily opened its doors—a bakery, a produce market, and a fledgling restaurant.

Doggedly pursuing quality Chase’s Daily has slowly and steadily grown over the years, and has evolved with the interests and desires of the family.