Linda Bean

Her largest Maine restaurant is Linda Bean's Maine Kitchen & Topside Tavern located across from the L.L.Bean flagship store in Freeport, Maine, the original site of a tavern built there in 1790.

Linda Lorraine Bean (born April 28, 1941) is an American businessperson and donor.

Bean served as publisher of The Maine Paper, a conservative newspaper published from 1979 to 1982.

Bean was also a fundraiser for the ERA Impact Coalition in Maine, which overturned the passage of the statewide Equal Rights Amendment in Maine in 1984.

As a candidate of the Republican Party, Bean ran unsuccessfully for the United States Congress in 1988 and 1992.

She is the granddaughter of Leon Leonwood Bean and an heiress to the L.L.Bean company.

Bean ran twice for Congress, in 1988 and 1992.

In 1988, Bean sought the Republican nomination for Maine's 1st district of the House to challenge incumbent former Maine Governor Joseph Brennan.

She ran under her married name of Linda Bean Jones.

She outspent her opponent, Edward S. O'Meara, by $395,000 but narrowly lost.

Bean ran again in 1992 for the Republican nomination, this time successfully, to challenge incumbent Democrat Thomas Andrews.

She won the nomination but lost 65% to 35% in the general election.

Linda Bean served as the vice chairman of the conservative group Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund for many years.

In 2005, Bean gave $10,000 to the Maine Grassroots Coalition, whose goal was to repeal a Maine law making discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal in employment, housing, credit, public accommodations, and education.

In 2007, Bean started her own lobster business by starting with buying a wharf in Port Clyde.

She later purchased others in Tenants Harbor and on the island of Vinalhaven.

Her business eventually produced over nine million pounds of lobster annually.

Her restaurants feature her grandfather's camp recipes and her own Perfect Maine lobster roll that has sold over 2 million since she introduced it in Freeport, Maine, in 2008 based on her own recipe.

The Portland International Airport features a Linda Bean's Maine Lobster Cafe with a full lounge bar.

Her restaurant and Internet brand offer products such as lobster bisque, lobster ravioli, coffee, sea salt, and barbecue sauce.

On September 27, 2010, Bean purchased the original tavern location from a retired fellow Freeport native George Denney, who started his career in her grandfather's store and went on to purchase a little known Freeport shoe company brand, Cole Haan, that he sold to Nike.

With John Hathaway, in whose Shucks Maine Lobster she also invested, Bean took the lead in achieving sustainability certification for the entire Maine coast trap lobster fishery by meeting the standards of the Marine Stewardship Council as announced by its founder Rupert Howes and by Maine Governor Paul LePage on March 10, 2013, at the International Boston Seafood Show.

Bean's investment in the lobster industry has been controversial.

She has argued for more lobster processing in Maine rather than in Canada, where more than half of Maine's lobsters currently go for processing and sale by other companies to the U.S. and elsewhere.

Additionally, an undercover video taken by PETA allegedly at one of the Maine Lobster processing plants showed workers ripping limbs off live lobsters, raising questions of animal cruelty.

A lawyer for Bean told the Portland Press Herald that "Our practices do not violate Maine's laws on cruelty to animals because lobsters do not come within the covered definition."

In addition to the lobster industry, Bean's interests include the timber and hospitality industries.

She owns large tracts of timber in western Maine, including maple syrup producing sugarbushes in Weld and Wyman, Maine.

Under the brand name enterprise "Linda Bean's Perfect Maine," she rents out vacation cottages and wedding locations and operates various businesses in midcoast Maine including two general stores in St. George.

In 2015, she initiated Linda Bean's Maine Wyeth Gallery in Port Clyde, and personally scripted Wyeths by Water art excursions on her converted lobster boat "Linderin Losh."

She owns the Seaside Inn and Barn Cafe in Port Clyde, the Dip Net wharf restaurant and nearby historic Ocean House and Dining Room.

In 2016, Bean partially retired and turned over majority ownership of her lobster enterprises to her general manager and employees in an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).

In 2016 she was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by The Kings College in Manhattan.

In April 2018, Bean opened an antiques stores in Freeport adjoining her grandfather's former home, bringing together three dozen antiques and art dealers under the name Freeport Antiques & Heirlooms Showcase.

In 2019, the business expanded to include Casco Bay Auctions.

Bean has served on the boards of numerous philanthropic organizations.

These include the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the Maine Historical Society, the Maine Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, the Portland Museum of Art and the Intercollegiate Studies Institutein Wilmington, Delaware.

In 2019 she founded The N.C.Wyeth Research Foundation and Reading Libraries, a non-profit private operating foundation established in Massachusetts to restore the illustrator's homes in Needham, and Wilmington, Delaware, and create a library and programs in Port Clyde, Maine, to foster a documented study of his leading contribution to the American age of book, magazine, calendar and poster illustration.

In January 2020, Linda Bean was one of thirteen "Women of Vision" honorees announced by the Farnsworth Art Museum.

This was met with a published letter of objection in a local newspaper due to her political activities (see below).