Living in an old East Boothbay chapel, still with its pews, stage and stained glass windows in the early 1980s when the family was renovating it, Sarah Heald rented space at a West Boothbay Harbor house, bought a pizza oven for $200 and started a delivery service. Four decades and a few moves later, the Sarah’s Cafe owner is retiring. Heald, 66, of Georgetown is selling the Wiscasset restaurant where generations of local students and others have worked and have been treated to trips to Boston and elsewhere, and where, Heald said, except for the flat tortillas for wraps, everything is made from scratch.

“There’s no mixes in this place,” she said at Sarah’s Friday morning. From the crab cake to the salad dressings and tartar sauce, to the cream in the eclairs, it is all made there.  

A restaurant will continue there: Jodie Roquemore confirmed in a separate interview last week, she is buying the Water Street property and will move her Jodie’s Cafe and Bakery there from its Route One location, which she has no immediate plans to sell. The Route One site’s next use and the name of the Water Street location are still to be decided; the closing on the Water Street property is later this month and Roquemore hopes to open there around a few weeks later. Roquemore, of Edgecomb, is excited, and she appreciates all that Sarah’s and Heald mean to Wiscasset.

“It’s iconic. She’s created an amazing business (and) to build a business like she has, from the ground up, is unbelievable. It’s huge.” 

Heald shared the history and memories with Wiscasset Newspaper in her office at Sarah’s Friday. She recalled a Georgetown childhood at the three-century-old family farm which “used to board the men cutting the masts for the schooners.” At Robinhood, Heald and fellow students helped build Country Mile School, named for being a mile into the woods. Artist Peter Farrow started the school and went on to depict Heald in her restaurant’s famous logos, with her barefoot, the way she went everywhere growing up.  

She and father Clayton Heald took a skiff one day. “He said ‘Sarah, I want you to meet an old friend of mine. I hear he’s back in town.’ We were walking up through the woods, and heard this gunshot. And there was Peter standing on the front porch. ‘Who goes there!’And my dad said ‘Hey, Pete, it’s Clayton, Clayton Heald.’ ‘Oh, come on up,’” came the reply, she recalled with laughter.

After the pizza deliveries out of West Boothbay Harbor, a boathouse at head of the harbor in Boothbay Harbor became “a small Sarah’s Cafe, Sarah’s Pizza – ‘the best pizza around’ – take-out, then we expanded for more seating, and then we actually went up front, too, so at one point we operated the whole downstairs. And we had people on the deck,” Heald added.

In 1987, Sarah’s moved to Main Street, Wiscasset, with Pendleton’s and Key Bank for neighbors, Heald said. There, around 1993, the family-oriented restaurant started a trend among area eateries when it went smoke-free, according to a Sept. 30, 1993 Wiscasset Times clipping Heald shared. And in 1997, Sarah’s moved to its current location, Heald said.

Over the years, Heald and staff have closed the place for a day and boarded a bus she would rent for a trip to Boston or elsewhere. “It was cool. We went whitewater rafting one year. Most everyone, even me.” Twice, they went to “The Magic of Christmas” in Portland.

“I would always do something. That’s how I built the business. I think it was important to say thank you to them and be friends. I’d always do something, and I’d have a big cookout at my farm. We’d hire a band.”

She enjoyed helping young people by hiring them and helping them learn.

“Sarah’s one of the most amazing people I know. She’s helped a lot of people all her life,” said Johnny Ellsworth, who has worked at Sarah’s since he was about 15. “It’s like a second home,” where he and many of the other staff have long worked together, and the trips Heald took them on were a blast, he said. 

The business, which also used to have Bath locations including a lunch-only one at City Hall, got past two big hits in recent years, Heald said: Maine Department of Transportation’s downtown construction “nearly killed us ... We spent a whole summer with no road out in front of the cafe”; and then came the pandemic. With Heald a lifelong Irish fan (at 12, she and two cousins traveled with grandmother Sara Smith to Ireland) Sarah’s threw a big Irish celebration every year. In March 2020, “We had 80 pounds of corn beef cooked, and all the Irish breads. And we had four customers in that whole entire day.”

The restaurant gave the rest to food banks. Sarah’s has a long tradition of giving away unsold food. “We came through (the pandemic), but it was a close call,” said Heald.

If not for the throat cancer she is in treatment for, she would not be closing, she said in the interview. Without going to work daily like she has continued to do, she looks forward to enjoying more time at home on the farm, with family, her Jack Russell and her gardens, and continuing her avid reading. “I’ve read almost all of Nora Roberts’ books.”

Heald wanted to let everyone know to redeem any Sarah’s gift cards now. She will miss all of Sarah’s customers. “I’d like to thank them all, for their support. Please come in and we will be here to serve you, until that day.” Sarah’s plans on being open through Saturday, June 24.