Maine is the oldest state in America.
Not oldest as in founded first. Oldest as in the median resident has been alive longer than the median resident anywhere else.
Now add the rest of it. Long winters. Towns of two thousand people separated by forest. A summer population that swells and then vanishes in September.
If you handed that profile to a retail analyst without naming the state, they would tell you not to build there.
Low density. Aging customers. Seasonal demand swings. Expensive heating costs. Roads that get genuinely dangerous for four months a year.
And yet there is a grocery chain that has been operating across northern New England since the 1880s, and it is not hanging on. It is the dominant supermarket in much of the region.
The reason is not charm. It is that every one of those problems is also a wall.