The owner of a longtime sandwich shop on Bangor’s east side announced over the weekend it would be closing at the end of the month.
The Legacy Sandwich Shop will serve its last sandwich on Sept. 30, after more than 14 years in business, according to a Facebook post made by owner Diane Bernosky.
Bernosky said in the post that there were several factors that led to the decision to close, including the challenges of the pandemic closure, staffing troubles and the increase in the costs of doing business.
The Legacy Sandwich Shop serves sandwiches, soups, desserts and other homemade lunch items. It specializes in Bangor’s iconic “coffee pot” sandwich, inspired by the sandwiches made for decades at the original Coffee Pot, the Bangor lunch spot operated by the Rist family for nearly 80 years that originated the sandwich. The Legacy opened in 2010 at 163 State St., next door to where the Coffee Pot originally stood.
The coffee pot sandwich is a Bangor specialty made with ham, salami, cheese and other toppings. There’s a specific order to the ingredients: it starts with a generous amount of chopped white onion in a sub roll — ideally made at Bangor’s Brick Oven Rye Bakery — followed by chopped green pepper, red pepper flakes and oil. It’s then topped with slices of tomato, cheese and finally the meat on top, finished with slices of dill pickle.
If it’s not in that order — and if you don’t smell like onions for hours after eating it — it’s not a coffee pot sandwich. It’s been a Bangor favorite for nearly a century.
When the original Coffee Pot lunch spot closed in 2009, two restaurants serving coffee pots sprang up in its place: the Legacy, on State Street, and the Coffee Pot Sandwich Shop at 652 Broadway. The Broadway eatery was operated by a longtime employee of Skip Rist, who ran the original Coffee Pot for more than 50 after his father, Grover, first opened it in 1930. The Legacy was originally opened by Bruce Guimond, who later sold the business to Bernosky in 2019.
In April 2012, the owners of the Coffee Pot Sandwich Shop on Broadway sued Guimond and the Legacy Sandwich Shop, claiming that the Legacy infringed on its trademark names for its sandwiches and that it engaged in deceptive trade practices. The Broadway eatery trademarked the words “Deluxe,” “Superdeluxe” and “Coffee Pot” in regards to their sandwiches, and said the Legacy shop was using those names in violation of that trademark.
The lawsuit was dismissed in October 2012, with both parties agreeing to drop the matter. Skip Rist, for his part, said in 2012 that he did not support the Coffee Pot Sandwich Shop’s claims, and that he had “nothing against” the Legacy.
The Coffee Pot Sandwich Shop on Broadway is still open, and other Bangor businesses also serve coffee pot-style sandwiches, including WeeBeez Market on Ohio Street.
