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Paul and Julie Roberts, owners of Coastal Maine Popcorn Co. in Boothbay Harbor, plan to open a store at 43 Exchange St. in Portland in early December.

John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Visit www.coastalmainepopcorn.com for more information on the company.

PORTLAND — A walk through the Old Port can be a bit predictable: fashion boutique, art gallery, art gallery, jewelry store, boutique, and so on.

But a company from Boothbay Harbor is opening a store on Exchange Street that signals a bit of a change from the neighborhood norm.

The store will focus exclusively on popcorn.

“It’s huge for us,” said Julie Roberts, who co-owns the Coastal Maine Popcorn Co. with her husband, Paul Roberts. “Everybody wants to be on Exchange Street in Portland, in the Old Port.”

The two have leased 43 Exchange St., former home to the Spoil Me Rotten boutique. They’re renovating the space and hope to open for business in early December.

While the Old Port is known for its relatively high level of business churn, Exchange Street, in particular, has taken on a slightly different feel in the past year.

Up the hill from the new popcorn business, a psychic shop has opened where a boutique once operated. Old Port mainstay JavaNet was sold recently to the lobster roll entrepreneur Linda Bean, who’s opening a restaurant with dishes focused on lobster.

“I think it’s great to have a diversity of retail choices there, whether it’s food or clothing or whatever,” said Godfrey Wood, chief executive officer of the Portland Regional Chamber. “You’ve got to really admire someone who’s starting a new business right now – they’re going to be creating jobs.”

Rents in the Old Port got so high that some of the business models in the buildings couldn’t support them, Wood said. The down economy may have caused some landlords to reconsider their rates.

“Landlords get realistic with the rent, and someone else comes in with a dream,” he said.

The Robertses opened their business in Boothbay Harbor in 2008. She’s a Boothbay Harbor native who worked at a similar place in town 20 years ago, when she was in high school. The business shut down six or seven years ago.

She suggested opening a popcorn business to Paul, who has a business management background but had been working for a home builder since he moved to the area seven years earlier.

“It was a fantastic idea,” he said.

The retail half of the business in Boothbay Harbor is seasonal, open mainly from June 1 through Oct. 15. The company pops its own popcorn, and that’s a year-round operation, said Paul Roberts.

They have a 6-foot-tall, stainless steel industrial hot air popper, capable of popping 50 pounds of kernels at a time. After the popcorn is popped, it’s flavored. The company offers 30 to 50 flavors at any one time, broken down into sweets (toasted coconut, maple, berry) and savories (salt and vinegar, buffalo wing, garlic).

The plan is to keep popping the popcorn in Boothbay Harbor, supplying the seasonal retail operation there and the year-round operation in Portland.

The company also sells custom-ordered popcorn. It can print labels for custom tins and color popcorn for school fundraisers, corporate gifts or special occasions such as weddings. It recently filled a $500 order for a bar mitzvah in Manhattan, Julie Roberts said.

Year-round, the company has three employees, including the owners. They hire a few more for the Boothbay Harbor retail operation in season, and plan to hire several in Portland, though Paul Roberts will be manning the store.

The Portland location will have bags of popcorn, tins and even bowls for sale, along with a couch for lounging and a free wireless Internet connection.

A large bag of popcorn – about four to five cups – will cost about $4. A larger bag, with about twice the popcorn, will cost about a buck more. Paul Roberts is thinking about offering deliveries to nearby offices and businesses.

While the two are worried about getting their store open in time to take advantage of the holidays, they’re not concerned about the viability of the business.

They’re at about break-even for the entire company, including branching out to the Portland location. They do expect profitability in the near future.

And while the economy is at a low, Paul Roberts noted that during the Great Depression, popcorn sales took off. Some popcorn-centric Web sites attribute that to an increase in movie attendance, and to the fact that popcorn remained a relatively cheap luxury.

“It’s a feel-good food,” he said.Staff Writer Matt Wickenheiser can be contacted at 791-6316 or at mwickenheiser@pressherald.com