Orland’s only year-round freestanding bar is now a restaurant that’s part of a small local chain.
Located at 47 Wardell Road, the former Sandy’s Saloon went on and off the market several times and briefly closed in its first few years of operation.
But two days after Christmas in 2024, Bangor businessman and bar owner Matt Brann opened a new restaurant there, the Hancock Pour House. It joins two other Pour House sites, the Penobscot Pour House in Bangor and the Somerset Pour House in Newport.
While the original Pour House site in Bangor is also a live music venue, the Orland location is focusing more on the restaurant and community side, according to Paul Aucoin, general manager of all three locations.
The owners are excited to make connections in a smaller community and bring a new restaurant option to the area, Aucoin said. It’s open for lunch and dinner seven days a week, with the doors staying open until 1 a.m. on weekends.
The restaurant has a full bar, draft beer offerings and a “pub food” menu that includes appetizers, wings, sandwiches, quesadillas and macaroni and cheese. Ten televisions show sports games. The restaurant also hosts regular karaoke nights and occasional live music.
Sandy’s Saloon was built in 2021 and opened that summer as one of two establishments selling liquor in town at the time. It went on the market for $1 million a year later without landing a buyer, closed for a few months the following spring and reopened in the summer of 2023.
Owner Dana Saunders sold it to Brann & Sons Property LLC in November 2024, documents filed at the Hancock County Registry of Deeds show. It sold for $770,000.
The sale comes amid a larger period of turnover in the Bucksport area’s restaurant scene.
A two-minute drive away on the busy section of Route 1, the restaurant Glenn’s Place was put on the market last July and remains for sale at $275,000. It’s listed as a turn-key business that does not include the land, which the current owners lease.
There has been more change in downtown Bucksport, where in July the former Friar’s Brewhouse reopened as Sicilian-inspired restaurant My Buddy’s Place, and in the fall Warren’s Waterfront Restaurant was sold to a new owner who had moved to Maine from Massachusetts.
Brann and his family have also owned and operated a nightclub and a chain of Edible Arrangements stores in the region.
