NORWAY — Christmas was more than a month ago, but the spirit lingers among Norway businesses welcoming a potential competitor to Main Street. 

The post-holiday months are traditionally some of the slowest at restaurants and bars, but that hasn’t stopped owners from saying they’re excited to see a new microbrewery in their midst. 

Last week, a local couple announced plans to open Norway Brewing Co., complete with a tap room, bar and outdoor beer garden, before the end of the year. The microbrewery will offer small plates of locally-sourced food and has been met with anticipation among residents who have known the couple, Charles Magne and Erika Melhus, for years. 

A location has not been finalized, but business owners hope wherever it is, the microbrewery will be another economic anchor attracting people from out-of-town. 

Cafe Nomad chef Kim Hamlin was cleaning a meat slicer after the morning rush on Monday. For her, a brewery is something Norway is missing. 

“I’m looking forward to a social life outside work. They’re friends of mine, so I know they’ll make good food and great beer,” Hamlin said. 

Hamlin said the brewery was different enough from Cafe Nomad, which offers breakfast, lunch and dinner on the weekend, that while in the short-run it may create some competition for customers, in the long term, the brewery will help create a vibrant food scene that attracts customers from Lewiston, Auburn and Portland. 

Hamlin likened customers at Cafe Nomad as locavores interested in homemade food and good coffee. Moving over to pour eggs whisked together in a pitcher into a hot pan, she likened those customers to people who would to enjoy local beer.

“The more people that come to Norway, it will be better for everyone,” she said.

Those sentiments were shared by Andrea Burns, the head of Norway Downtown, who said the relation between restaurants or bars and a microbrewery was less like opposing casinos, in which profits are directly “cannibalized,” and more like filling a niche that will augment the others. 

“We have a population increasingly coming to Norway for recreation, visitors who are curious about our Main Street and what it has to offer,” Burns said.  

“I think they bring an innovative, exciting offer that will add to the already eclectic variety,” she said.

At Creative Media, a graphic design outfit that doubles as Tuckers Music Pub on weekend nights, owner Anne Mallory was printing copies of a handout for customers.

Mallory said she’s been mulling plans to expand the nights the pub hosts live bands, and news of a microbrewery won’t change those.   

“I think it will affect us, (but) I’m happy and excited to see another business on Main Street,” she said.

She, too, was excited by the prospects, saying downtown could easily accommodate two bars during the summer, and will have to wait and see if the same is true during the slower winter months.

“Getting through the winter is one of the toughest parts of the restaurant field,” she said.

Down the road a few miles in Paris, Smilin’ Moose Tavern owner Kathy Deluca was taking orders from customers drifting in from the cold around dinner time Monday evening.

The bar, which has a few microbrewed beers on tap, doesn’t see the microbrewery as much as a competitor but as a resource for offering their clientele something central to their business since they opened in 2009. 

“This region is missing (a brewery). Beer is a growing business — people love it. It’s a niche group not interested in Budweiser,” Deluca said. 

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