Five years ago, Tiffany Lopes was not planning to build one of Central Maine’s fastest-growing food businesses. She wasn’t pitching investors. She wasn’t workshopping a business plan. She was a former stay-at-home mom and yoga teacher, searching for something that felt like hers again, a next chapter that had a purpose she could hold onto.
She found it in her kitchen. Specifically, in sourdough bagels.
Originally from Upstate New York, Tiffany had spent years in Maine quietly missing the food she grew up with. She started experimenting at home, teaching herself the craft of naturally leavened dough, long fermentation, hand-rolling, all of it. And somewhere in that process, something clicked.
“It changed my world,” she said.
That moment of personal discovery became Sunrise Bagel: a now-thriving, owner-operated business with four locations across Waterville, Augusta, Oakland, and Gardiner, and approximately 70 people on its payroll. It is one of the most compelling small business growth stories to come out of the Kennebec Valley in recent years, and it started with nothing more than a passion, a little flour, and the willingness to figure it out.
Women started 49% of all new U.S. businesses in 2024, up from just 29% in 2019. Tiffany Lopes is exactly who those numbers are talking about.
A New Yorker’s Craving Becomes a Central Maine Institution
To understand Sunrise Bagel, you have to understand the gap Tiffany was filling both personally and in the market.
For many transplants to Maine, the absence of a proper New York-style bagel is a real and ongoing loss. Tiffany knew that feeling well. So she started making her own sourdough-leavened, hand-rolled, and fermented for days before baking. The result is a bagel that is naturally lower in gluten than conventional varieties, with a crisp exterior, a chewy interior, and real depth of flavor that commercial shortcuts simply cannot replicate.
Central Maine has seen growing enthusiasm for this kind of artisan bagel in recent years, local food coverage has tracked the category expanding as more customers seek out small-batch, craft options over mass-produced alternatives. Tiffany got there early, and she got there with a product that genuinely stood out.
What began as batches for family and friends quickly found an audience. Neighbors asked for them. Then strangers. Then more strangers. Demand kept arriving faster than she could meet it, which is both the best and most terrifying problem a new food business can have.
Most food businesses fail within their first five years. Sunrise Bagel didn’t just survive, it multiplied.
Starting Small, Scaling Smart: The Strategy Behind the Growth
Sunrise Bagel’s first location in Waterville occupied less than 1,000 square feet, small by design, not by accident. That first space was about proving the concept: that Central Maine customers would show up for a high-quality, sourdough-forward bagel experience. They did. Consistently.
Rather than jumping to replicate the same small footprint in every new market, Tiffany made a more deliberate strategic move. She opened a larger centralized production hub in Augusta, a purpose-built facility that now supplies the Oakland and Gardiner locations with the same hand-rolled product customers expect across all four shops. That centralized model has been the backbone of Sunrise Bagel’s ability to scale without losing quality or consistency. It is the kind of operational thinking that takes most businesses years to arrive at.
Even more telling: the Augusta production facility has not yet reached capacity. Tiffany says it can support at least one more location in the future. Sunrise Bagel is not finished growing.
More Than a Bagel: A Full-Service Bakery Menu
Walk into any Sunrise Bagel location today and the menu tells a more expansive story than the name suggests. Yes, the sourdough bagels are still the centerpiece, fermented for days, hand-rolled to order, and available in rotating sweet and savory combinations. But Sunrise Bagel has grown into a full-service bakery and café destination.
Customers can expect:
• Signature sourdough bagels, naturally lower in gluten, with a rotating menu of flavors and house-made cream cheeses
• A full rotating bakery menu with scratch-made breakfast and lunch options
• Catering services for events, workplace meetings, and private gatherings across Central Maine
For a region that was largely underserved in this category just a few years ago, Sunrise Bagel has become a genuine anchor, the kind of place locals build their morning routines around. That kind of loyalty is earned, not bought.
Sunrise Bagel’s Gardiner location was also recently featured on Main Street Maine, which highlighted the shop’s “warm, welcoming spot to start the day” as an anchor to downtown Gardiner’s commercial corridor.
The Community That Helped Carry Her Through
Growth rarely happens in isolation, and Tiffany is the first to acknowledge that. Alongside the support of her family, one of the pivotal pieces of her journey was finding the right room to sit in, and UpStart Maine provided it.
Through UpStart Maine’s Women Business Owners Mastermind, Tiffany connected with a peer group of women across Maine who were navigating the same questions, the same pressures, and the same uncertainty she was. Not investors. Not consultants. Actual business owners who understood what it felt like to be in the middle of it.
Those conversations covered everything, logistics, staffing challenges, financial decisions, the unglamorous daily grind, and they were grounded in the kind of candor that only comes from people who aren’t trying to sell you anything. For Tiffany, that access to honest, real-world perspective made a real difference in her confidence and her decision-making.
That kind of peer accountability and lived experience is harder to find than most people realize. It is also, research consistently shows, one of the strongest predictors of small business longevity. According to
Gusto’s 2024 New Business Formation Report, women-owned businesses have outpaced men-owned firms in both employee growth (252.8%) and revenue growth from 2019 to 2023, and community and mentorship networks are among the factors researchers cite as driving that momentum.
Tiffany’s experience with the Mastermind reflects exactly what UpStart Maine was built to create: a space where entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be a solo act.
What She Would Tell the Person Standing at the Beginning
Tiffany Lopes does not romanticize what building Sunrise Bagel required. The long hours. The pressure of payroll for 70 people. The decisions made with imperfect information in high-stakes moments. None of that gets erased by the success.
But she also does not waver on whether it was worth it.
“Go for it,” she says. “It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s also the most rewarding.”
Today, Tiffany has moved beyond being just a participant in entrepreneurial communities. She mentors other business owners, sharing the lessons she earned through trial and error and the kind of growth that only comes from staying in when things get hard. She has become, in other words, exactly the kind of person the Women Business Owners Mastermind was built to produce, someone who pays it forward.
A Reminder That Big Things Often Start Small
Tiffany Lopes’s story doesn’t fit a tidy entrepreneurship narrative. There was no venture capital. No tech accelerator. No dramatic pivot moment from a high-powered career. There was a woman from New York who missed good bagels, a kitchen, and enough stubbornness to keep going.
What grew from that is four locations, 70 jobs, and a business that has become part of the daily rhythm of life in Central Maine communities. It is a reminder that the path to purpose is rarely obvious from the beginning, and that the right community, found at the right moment, can change everything.
UpStart Maine is proud to be part of Tiffany’s story, and proud of the community of entrepreneurs who continue to show up for one another. If you’re building something in Maine and looking for that community, we’d love to connect with you.
If you have questions or need guidance, we’re here to help. Contact us at innovation@upstartmaine.org
UpStart’s mission is to be the Bangor Region’s innovation hub that connects entrepreneurs statewide with resources to grow their businesses.
For more information on UpStart, contact innovation@upstartmaine.org