CAMDEN, Maine — Nearly every morning for 40 years, long before dawn, Dan Gabriele has walked to work.
"If I heard the church bell at 4 a.m., I knew I had to walk a little faster," Dan laughed, explaining what it takes to be ready to open the restaurant.
Marriner's Restaurant, on Camden’s Main Street, has been the town's year-round popular breakfast place since Dan and wife Becki took it over four decades ago.
"Real food, real people," customer Bob Weiner said. He said he has been coming to Marriner's often all those years.
Now he and everyone else in town will need to get used to a new place. The Gabrieles have sold Marriner's, and as of closing time Dec. 31, are officially retired.
"Forty years have gone by very fast," Becki said. "It's been a lot of hard work."
Becki and Dan said Marriner's had already been in business 40 years when they came to town to visit his parents, who had been renting a cottage. Neither had any restaurant experience then.
They learned fast.
"We were young, no kids and we fell in love with the town. [We] raised four kids in the kitchen," Dan said.
Marriner's Restaurant has been a family business in the true sense of the term. Their children—Lindsay, Troy, Joel, and Ally—literally grew up there, living in an apartment upstairs in the early years.
Lindsay McKittrick, now married with her own children, said Becki was pregnant with her when the parents started the business.
"They would set me in the pot sink," she laughed. "They would set my little infant seat up on the counter there and I would just sit while they worked. So at age three or four I would stand on crates and do dishes."
Her siblings tell similar stories of working at an early age.
"I never really had to find a job as a kid," Joel said, "because there was always one waiting here. Dishwasher, host, waiter, chef, done it all."
All four said they learned the lessons of hard work from their parents. And while all have grown up to become teachers, like their mother, who taught for 27 years and worked in the restaurant as well, the kids of Dan and Becki have continued to work shifts in Marriner's during summer vacations.
Dan and Becki, they say, have always been working.
"The granddaughters did the math and found I cooked my 4-millionth egg the other day," Dan said as he cooked eggs and pancakes on the grill. He looked out the window at Camden harbor.
"Four million eggs. In 40 years. Crazy! But, 15,000 sunrises over that waterfall and harbor," he smiled.
Both he and Becki agree its time to retire and slow down a bit. They sold the restaurant in the fall and decided to keep going until the end of December. And for the week after Christmas, all four kids came back to work, shoulder to shoulder, with their parents one last time.
All agree, it was emotional.
"This is where we grew up, where we learned how to put in hard work, improve our memory, and always greet people where they’re at, regardless of who is sitting at each table," Ally said.
"It feels right to see them through, prop them up for the big finish," Troy said about working the last week.
"And the chance to close this chapter as a group has been exactly what was meant to be."
The restaurant will be closed for a few months, and then, they say, the new owner will re-open under a new name: Buttermilk Kitchen at Marriner's. Parents and kids all say they will come in and give it a try.
Dan and Becki say they’ve bought a farm in nearby Union and will move there and do a bit of farming, and enjoy life.
It will be a change for Camden, and for the restaurant regulars, the 6 a.m. crowd who already know the place they have come to know and love won’t be the same. Generations of kids and families who say Dan and Becki knew Marriner's was the kind of place they could count on to be open, when needed, with real food and real people.
"Team dinners, gatherings for happy and sad occasions, they knew Marriner's would always be here."