161 Best Places to Shop in Maine, USA

With its emphasis on high-value merchandise—from Timberland shoes and Carhartt jackets to locally made products like Maine Chefs Wild Blueberry Jam, Raye’s Mustard, and bamboo cutting boards made into a map of Maine—this third-generation family-run Maine-centric department has been serving Mainers since 1949. There are 17 stores around the state, but this location is an excellent place to pick up clever souvenirs, a sweater for chilly nights, gifts for folks back home, or just a home accessory to reinforce your love of the Pine Tree State.

With clapboards and trim in contrasting shades of blue and a grand entrance, this year-round gift shop in an old storefront pops on Milbridge's Main Street. Inside the large, beautifully arrayed store, offerings live up to the expectations the exterior creates. Many Maine-made items are among a selection that includes premium bath products, kitchen gadgets, fun socks, books about Maine, and jewelry—check out the store's own vintage-look Riverlily earrings.

This farm hosts a weekend market featuring its own meat (including succulent Meishan pork), eggs, and produce, as well as items from other local producers and makers. You can also get breakfast sandwiches.

Decidedly contemporary, with a Scandinavian bent, this well-curated boutique stocks offbeat cards and letterpress stationery, locally handcrafted goods, jewelry, and one-of-a-kind objects for the home.

You should be able to find what you need for your kitchen at Rooster Brother. On the first floor of a towering Victorian building, specialty foods, fresh cheese, baked goods, wines (including a nice selection of sherry and port), and house-roasted coffee are on offer and samples are always available. Upstairs is a huge collection of cooking items and pretty much everything for your table.

With flavored and pure exotic salts culled from just about every corner of the world, you might well say that this gift shop (housed, yes, in a cellar) is entirely worth its salt. While you're here, check out the Salt Vault, a halotherapy spa area—$50 gets you a 50-minute session that is claimed to help alleviate respiratory ailments such as asthma and skin conditions like acne, psoriasis, and eczema.

Sweet hand-painted and -lettered signs created with scrap wood found along the coast from Maine to Newfoundland by owners Kim and Leon are sold at this gallery. On the back, they write where the wood was found. A "Loon" sign has paintings of loon, a "Blueberry" sign of blueberries, and so on, and some have town names or say "Welcome," but all are unique. Kim's original fiction and paintings, which capture connections between the Down East coast and the people who make their living on it, are also sold, as are her travel-inspired scenes of Ireland and India. If you head this way consider continuing on back roads through Harrington and Addison to Jonesport and Beals Island and hiking at a preserve in the region as part of the outing.

Tucked down a driveway beside the trail to the Giant's Stairs, this tiny cottage is packed with carefully selected, Maine-made items created by nearly 100 artisans. The paintings, jewelry, soaps, clothing, textiles, and other wares make the perfect gifts or souvenirs.

With a knowledgeable crew of "budtenders," Seaweed Co.'s flagship location is unusually spacious, with plenty of room to gather with fellow enthusiasts or the staff and learn more about the products that range from flower to sleep aids and edibles to tinctures. The bright and sunny store is lined in blonde woods and tables filled with products, and sitting areas indoors and out. Food trucks, live music, and events sometimes make a showing. There is a second, smaller location in Portland's Bayside neighborhood.

Some 4,000 pieces of statement-making jewelry from artisans worldwide are displayed in this spacious store. Most pieces cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, but there are $10 items, and perhaps a $60,000 diamond necklace—you can always just look. Maine-made works include owner Sam Shaw’s unique 18kt gold bracelets, rings, and necklaces created with birch twigs. On nice summer days, glass wall panels open to a small “view garden” out back. Also come summer, the walls serve as an art gallery, with new shows and a Thursday evening opening every two weeks.

A gorgeous selection of Scandinavian home and design imports fills this eye-popping boutique, with an emphasis on exquisite crafts.

In a cute tiny red building with a welcoming porch at the end of Bernard Road across from Thurston's Lobster Pound, this shop stays open into the evening. Smart, tasteful offerings include home decor, original art, body and bath products, jewelry, and summer clothing. Many items have sea or nautical themes, such as seashell earrings and float rope door mats. 

If you're captivated by the beauty of the Maine Coast, come here to make a little of the scenery your own, in the form of a painting or other work of art created by excellent local artists. Rendered in a variety of media, there are landscapes, seascapes, and other compelling images that exude the mystique of Maine. 

Right downtown, this welcoming shop sells an array of items—everything from jewelry and wood cutting boards to American Girl doll clothing and photography and paintings. Whoever waits on you can show you their own wares, as some of the 75 or so artisans and artists whose works are represented own and run the shop.

Ann and Paul Breeden’s Spring Woods Gallery, nestled between their home and a large shade garden for visitors, is illuminated by a tall arched window. Local farm animals appear often in her colorful, playful oil paintings. His strikingly realistic acrylic paintings capture the intensity of the Maine Coast. Sculpture and paintings by their children are also sold at this welcoming gallery just off U.S. 1 in Sullivan. Folks are welcome to come just for the tranquil garden. 

You've probably seen Stonewall Kitchen's jars of chutneys, jams, jellies, salsas, and sauces in specialty stores back home. This complex houses the expansive flagship store, which has a viewing area of the bottling process. Sample all the mustards, salsas, and dressings you can stand, or have lunch at the café, then meander through the stunning gardens to the Stonewall Home Company Store, offering candles, hand lotions, and essentials for the garden and home.

Clean and high-quality recreational cannabis—in forms ranging from edibles and concentrates to topicals—is the focus of this local company, started in 2015 by a husband-and-wife team. Sustainability is also a concern; the duo champions organic growing practices, growing plants in living soil, rich in organic matter and beneficial microbes, with clean water. 

Colorful gummies, circus peanuts, swirling lollipops, jelly beans, a chocolate lobster bake, homemade fudge, and much and much more fill the shelves and jars at this wacky fun candy store. Black-and-white patterns and bold colors combine in theatrical displays inside, outside, and in the store windows, making this shopfront hard to miss. 

This visually pleasing shop stocks an array of treasures for the home and garden. There's a selection of personal accessories, toiletries, and children's books, too.

In a striking 1886 brick building downtown with maroon wood banding on the front, this spacious, uncluttered, well-lit store features the works of many fine Maine artisans and artists as well as a nice selection of books including Passamaquoddy-theme children's books. Open year-round, it offers fine jewelry, bowls made from gourds, paintings, and Passamaquoddy baskets among many other decorative and useful items. Owned and operated by a trio of local women known as "The Women of the Commons," the property has vacation rentals with wonderful water views above the store. 

The Dry Dock offers clothing, gifts, and accessories (many made of Deer Isle granite) and is described by owner Janet Chaytor as “a creative department store.” 

In a late 1800s commercial building on Main Street, natural light washes into both floors of this large rectangular gallery. Offering an arresting mix of paintings in a host of mediums and styles by nationally acclaimed contemporary artists, a specialty—not found at many such top-tier galleries—is fine art or sculpted furniture. There is also sculpture.

Bring your own bag for morning shopping at the Gateway York Farmers' Market, held in the back lot at the Greater York Region Chamber of Commerce on Saturday in summer (mid-May–mid-November, 9–1). You'll find fresh, locally grown produce and flowers; lots of baked goods, pies, and artisanal breads; local meat and eggs; and handcrafted items like soaps, jewelry, pottery, and candles. It's a good place to gather the makings for a beach picnic or to stock up on holiday gifts.

This emporium is a longtime local favorite. Jewelry, candles, stylish clothing, shoes, toiletries, gifts, toys—you'll find all that and lots more here. 

Calling itself "a general store for the 21st century," the Green Store stocks a wide variety of household items, clothing, cards, and many other products. Most of the goods in this inviting emporium come from organic sources and all emphasize sustainability and preservation of the environment. It's a great place to browse, and chances are you'll discover something you need, or didn't need but have to have.

Fine china, and lots of it, is front and center at this upscale small department store in downtown Northeast Harbor. Many patterns are formal, yet one big seller is a line of dishes embellished with a red lobster or a blue octopus. Among the other impeccably arrayed offerings: kitchen items, toys, home decor, and children’s clothing. A sister store with uber-nice women’s apparel is down the street.

This appealing emporium brims with both vintage and new finds to embellish and enliven the home. There's also a selection of unusual gifts and sweet children's items. 

Maine's largest shopping mall (and the second largest in northern New England) is enclosed and has a full stable of the expected national and international retail shops including Pottery Barn, Apple, Banana Republic, H&M, and Sephora. Mixed in, however, are regional and local stores, too. Department stores include Macy's and JC Penney, and the food court offers healthier options like Red Mango and a Mediterranean grill on top of the usual fast food.

Filling two stories and a lower level, this one-of-a-kind and even out-of-this-world shop is chock full of books (for adults and kids), toys (many educational), and other items (of the gift variety), all relating to science and nature. But there’s much more in this store, located in an old-fashioned commercial strip just up from Seal Harbor beach. Part museum, each room and space is fantastically painted and designed around a theme, like the moon, earth, or dinosaurs. Items for sale are grouped accordingly, as are exhibits, many of them interactive. Students from the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor were involved in creating the store.