A couple of years after graduation, Jon Hubbard and Doug Maffucci, sharing an apartment in Portland, Maine, made "a fairly conscious decision" to do some kind of business together based on things they enjoyed, outdoor activities especially. "We wanted to live in Maine," said Hubbard. "The question was, how can we make a living?" Avid cyclists, they opted for a bicycle rental business in Bar Harbor because of the town's quality of life. Six or seven years later they sold out--"You get stale in a business after a time," Hubbard said--moved into real estate, opened The Lompoc Cafe in 1989 and two years later got the capital to begin producing Bar Harbor Real Ale to supply the Lompoc and to sell wholesale. From a one-barrel, 31-gallons-a-day beginning, the Atlantic Brewing Co. has expanded and this year will produce about 50,000 gallons of both aged and fresh ales. It's a small, high-tech operation, says Maffucci, but it produces a lot of beer. Their selling season is May 1 to New Year's Day, and they make aged ales between February and May, so even though it's a slower paced business in the winter it's year-round. They "can't make enough beer in the summer," Maffucci says, and have to rely on the aged ales to carry them through "an insatiable demand." Although their beer is sold around the country, half is sold right on Mount Desert Island, keeping their marketing costs low. "It's like an old milk route, very personal," Maffucci said. The pub, restaurant and brewery together employ about 30 people at the summer peak, which Maffucci calls "a nice business, a nice scale." Despite a phenomenal growth rate in the brew pub market, their aim is to stay only within the state, he says, discounting "the American drive to make 'em bigger and better. The whole point of the industry is that it's fresh and local. It's proof that you can make a good local beer, a true beer." Maffucci feels that he and Hubbard could take the plunge on their bike rental and other enterprises together because Colby "was an eye-opener to opportunities, to learning about what you could do. I had friends whose families were in business on a grander scheme. That opened me to people and the world," he said. "At Colby we understood that it could happen." "Having an education, you can do research," said Hubbard, an administrative science major, remembering how they moved from the bicycle business into the restaurant and brew pub. "You're open to ideas, to what ideas might work where you're located. Others here are intelligent but maybe a bit . . . provincial? We didn't invent the brew pub," he said, "but we could see it's importance, and we made it happen." All colleges have their legends, but it's doubtful that many have institutionalized the concept of serendipity as Colby did with President Robert Strider's talk to generations of entering classes: you go to the library, look for a book and stumble across another book that leads you to your life's work. Hubbard says he can't recall whether he actually ever heard President Strider's "serendipity speech," but he knows that everybody knew it, and he thinks "maybe that's the common thing in the Colby mind." Hubbard says his and Maffucci's projects, not always financially successful, have created tension from time to time, but he thinks perspective for the long range gets the partnership through. "It took me a long while to accept the fact that he was Italian," Hubbard jokes. "I make light of that, but it's important to have a sense of humor." And, he said, "Part of what's essential, in business or in personal life, is a sense of trust. Not everything's going to go your way. You need an open mind, you need to be willing to listen, be open to give and take, try it and see how it goes. You may not agree on everything, but keep in mind that you're in this together for the long run." Even though they weren't thinking of families back when they started out, both married about the same time in the mid '80s and, says Maffucci, understood each other's changes. They agree that Bar Harbor, a small town with a cosmopolitan summer population, turned out to be a great place to raise a family, too. "I'd go back to the serendipity speech," Hubbard said. "Follow things that are good in business and marriage both. The mind is new and fresh and active." He cites the bottle business they've developed as a spin-off from the brewery. Maffucci says they collaborated with Colby junior Tom Moffitt on a Jan Plan project to test for impurities in yeast strains from Europe and to ensure that their fermentations are free of contaminants. Moffitt, under the guidance of Associate Professor of Biology Frank Fekete, set up a testing laboratory at the brewery and taught Hubbard and Maffucci procedures for conducting the tests themselves. "It's a real practical thing," said Maffucci, a history major, anticipating refreshing biology lab skills he'd learned at Colby. "I really think small business allows you to pursue a breadth of knowledge."