A Maine Week Where Red Kettles, Advanced Textiles and an Electric Waterfront All Move in the Same Direction
🦃 Happy Thanksgiving, Maine Startups Insider Community
This week’s issue has a special focus. Our Founder(s) Interview highlights Ger Liang Tysk from Red Kettle Kimchi in Belfast, whose story is a reminder that Maine’s innovation economy is shaped by food as much as labs and tech. Her path is personal, grounded and entrepreneurial in the truest sense. And Ger is just so darn cool. She’s one of those people who embodies an incredible blend of humility and confidence. I first read about Ger in Mainebiz, tried her kimchi last summer, and then bumped into her at LaunchPad. It feels right to share her story on a week built around food, family, and the tables we gather around.
We also take a look at UMaine’s new FASTR Lab, a full pipeline for advanced textiles; a milestone moment in marine electrification on Portland’s waterfront; a new place for manufacturers to talk shop; a blue biotech accelerator; and a reminder that Top Gun applications must be submitted by December 2.
Wherever you are gathering this week, thank you for reading, sending ideas, sharing stories and helping this community grow.
Alright, let’s get into it!
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/The Founder(s) Interview🎤
The Red Kettle That Became a Compass: Asian Flavors. Maine backbone.
The New American Flavor: A Former Ship Cook Finds Pan-Asian Identity on the Coast of Maine, One Jar of Kimchi at a Time.
At four in the morning the galley comes alive. The ship tilts, the stove sings, and a young cook moves through a choreography she has stitched together by feel. There is inventory to protect and a crew to feed. Breakfast happens in waves because someone is always at the helm. When the wind stacks up and the rain needles through, the morale of a floating classroom rests on hot rice, a soft-boiled egg, a tray of something sweet left out for the midnight watch.
This is where Red Kettle Kimchi began, long before the first label or purchase order. Ger Liang Tysk was a cook on education vessels, feeding 15 to 40 students and professional sailors at sea for days or weeks at a time. There was no grocery run if you miscounted cabbage. Fresh produce was a luxury to be guarded. Comfort food was currency.
On one long passage in the Caribbean, with ideas running low and the cabbage aging in the hold, she improvised. “It was not great kimchi,” she says, laughing. It was green cabbage, paprika, soy, a few carrots, none of it close to anyone’s notion of textbook Korean ferment. And yet it worked. The emergency kimchi brightened fried rice and steadied a boatful of bodies that had been moving for days. More important, it taught her something she had never learned in a home without handed-down recipes. “I could put things together and make the food I wanted,” she says. “I did not have a family food tradition. I learned I could build one.”
Ger’s path to food is a patchwork of creative lives. She has been an artist, a graphic designer, a musician who leads a Japanese drumming group in Boston. She has written books. Red Kettle Foods is her fifth business, and the first that turns ideas into objects you can hold, taste, and share. The company took root in Maine in 2022 after she left the boats behind and moved north to be with the man who is now her husband. Restaurants were a way to stay close to kitchens but not a life she craved. Starting a product company felt equally unlikely until friends and chefs kept returning to one refrain: sell your kimchi.
“I resisted,” she says. “I am not Korean. The kimchi I made on the boat was not what people call authentic. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try.” She bootstrapped. Mornings started at five. She rented time in a commercial kitchen because home production was not allowed. She made kimchi until midday, drove to a restaurant shift, worked until 11 p.m., slept, and did it again. “The first months you are hemorrhaging money. I saved every penny from the restaurant to cover rent and ingredients. When I realized I could break even, I quit the restaurant job.”
Her pitch was simple and direct. Asian owned. Fermented foods. A product that sits at the center of the Venn diagram of health, trend, and flavor. She aimed first at co-ops, and the answer came back fast in a language every founder understands. Reorders. Then reorders of the reorders. “Mid-2022 is when I felt it,” she says. “People get this.”
The brand arrived almost as a joke. Ger and her husband stood in their kitchen tossing names around, eyes scanning the room for inspiration. “He pointed at the shelf. Then the red kettle on the stove. Red Kettle Kimchi. It had a ring to it.” The name stuck because the symbol ran deeper than a punch line. The kettle was a plain, inexpensive model her mother bought “Probably with a coupon,” laughs Ger. It became to stand for a patchwork family scattered by history and tied together at a kitchen table.
There is a chapter of that family story that does not usually show up on labels. Her mother’s side fled southern China during the Japanese invasion around World War II. The stories are vivid and harrowing. Towns on fire. Bags dropped to run faster. Trauma that had no name. Later, through work and marriage, Japan became part of the family as well. “My food tries to hold all of that,” Ger says. “Colonization within Asia, the way Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures share ingredients but cook them differently. Red Kettle is pan-Asian on purpose. It is not only Korean or only Chinese. It is a conversation.”
The conversation deepens in Maine. She wants to source locally, but reality is cold soil and short seasons. The math is brutal on year-round staples. “I would love to be 100 percent Maine, but I also need to pay employees and keep the lights on,” she says. About 20 percent of ingredients come from Maine farms, a number that swings higher in winter when she makes daikon kimchi with Maine daikon, Maine apples, and Maine salt. When she buys from away, she buys through Maine distributors. Packaging travels a similar route. “Even if a jar is made elsewhere, I work with a Maine company to bring it in. I am willing to pay a little more to keep those businesses alive and to be able to walk a warehouse instead of guessing online.”
Scale brings a different kind of tension. The company is compliant, clean, and tested. There is FDA scrutiny, Maine Department of Agriculture oversight, allergen protocols, and pH logs. The stainless steel and sanitizer solve one problem and create another. “I started because I wanted to cook for my family,” she says. “Production can feel sterile. Farmers’ markets keep me connected. I do Rockland and one midcoast market. It is my community. People tell me what they are cooking. It reminds me who I am feeding.”
Identity, for Ger, is the thread that ties the work together. She was born in Chicago and grew up in Houston. She speaks Chinese and Japanese, but the moment she is in Asia people can see she is American. Here, strangers sometimes ask what country she is from. “There is a disconnect between my face and how I act and where I am from,” she says. “My food is the bridge. Asian flavors made in America with American-grown ingredients. That is my story. It is the story of a lot of people here.”
The bridge is getting longer. In 2024 she added a catering license, private dinners, and classes. The next move steps directly into the dream she once dismissed. A restaurant, but on her terms. On December 21 she will run a full-service pop-up dinner at 40 Paper in Camden. The menu lands between nostalgia and revelation. Not sushi. Not ramen. Not American Chinese. “Down-home dishes you would get if you walked into an Asian family’s kitchen,” she says. The umbrella for all of it is Rabbit Moon, a name she is road-testing for a future that could include a small cafe, a retail shop for Asian goods and housewares, and, yes, jars of Red Kettle Kimchi in the co-op fridge.
If the company has a soundtrack, she already knows it. Ayumi Hamasaki’s album I am…, a turn-of-the-millennium pop record that carries more weight than its gloss suggests. The lyrics are simple, the meanings layered, the mood forward. She has been playing it since it came out. It sounds like movement. It sounds like building a life.
Ask what she would tell the version of herself who was juggling hot pans on a rocking sea and she does not hesitate. It gets better. The work is still hard. Food costs squeeze. Tariffs swing. The list of rules is long. Yet the jars continue to disappear from shelves, and new flavors bubble to life on the prep table. The red kettle still waits on the stove each morning, a reminder that home is something you build, and rebuild, and share.
👩🏽💻 Started a new job in the Maine startup community? Email your new hire announcement to news@mainestartupsinsider.com
/The Scoop📰
UMaine’s FASTR Lab, A New Hub for Advanced Textiles
The University of Maine has a new Fiber and Specialty Textiles Research Lab, known as FASTR, inside the Advanced Structures and Composites Center in Orono. The lab gives researchers, companies and startups a place to design, test and produce next-generation textiles under one roof.
FASTR covers the full process. Polymer extrusion. Fiber creation. Knitting and weaving. Coating and finishing. Testing and analysis. The setup allows teams to move an idea from concept to prototype without jumping between facilities or states. The lab also supports student training and workforce development in a field that is quickly evolving.
The applications reach far beyond traditional textiles. Researchers are working on protective fabrics for first responders and industrial workers, smart materials for sensing and communication, high-performance reinforcements for infrastructure, and ways to turn post-consumer textile waste into new materials. Early partners include defense contractors, outdoor brands and composite manufacturers.
For Maine founders, FASTR offers something rare. Access to equipment that normally requires seven-figure investment. A place to experiment with new materials while staying close to home. A technical partner for startups building new products in apparel, aquaculture, aerospace, clean tech or construction.
FASTR adds another anchor to UMaine’s growing research network and gives the state a credible foothold in advanced textiles. Startups looking to prototype, test or scale specialty fabrics now have a place to start.
Key takeaway: FASTR positions Maine as a real player in advanced textiles by giving researchers and startups a full development pipeline inside the state.
Marine Electrification Finds Its Footing on Portland’s Waterfront
The Gulf of Maine Research Institute brought industry leaders to the newly rebuilt Wright’s Wharf for the Marine Electrification Launch, a public look at two important firsts for Maine’s working waterfront.
Guests saw the Heron, a 28-foot aluminum aquaculture vessel built by Fogg’s Boatworks and operated by Maine Ocean Farms. It is the state’s first fully electric workboat and can haul up to 4,000 pounds with zero emissions. To support it, partners unveiled the first public Level 3 marine fast charger in Portland Harbor. Installed by Aqua superPower, the station fills a key infrastructure gap by allowing commercial vessels to recharge quickly between trips.
The event capped a one million dollar pilot coordinated by the Greater Portland Council of Governments and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. Partners across research, industry and government say the launch shows that clean propulsion is now a practical option for working vessels.
Key takeaway: Marine electrification is moving from theory to operation in Maine. With electric workboats and high-speed charging now in place, the door is open for startups and suppliers to scale new products and services along the coast.
Big Room Technologies MFG Launches “Shop Talk Maine,” a Monthly Meetup for Manufacturers
Big Room MFG is launching Shop Talk Maine, a new monthly virtual meetup created to keep Maine’s manufacturing community connected between larger industry events. The format is simple. One hour. First Wednesday of each month. No slides, no panels, no membership. Just an open Zoom room where manufacturers can compare challenges, share ideas and meet peers across the state.
Event details:
• First Wednesday monthly
• 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
• Launches January 7, 2026
“Between the bigger industry events, there is a real need for simple ways to stay connected,” said Jackie Macomber, Director of Operations at Big Room. “This meetup fills that gap.”
Inspired by a recent open house, the series welcomes anyone from startups to established businesses working in or around manufacturing. Big Room MFG has also added a Slack community to keep conversations going between sessions. Visit Big Room MFG’s website for more information.
Key takeaway: A low-pressure, consistent way for Maine’s manufacturers to stay in touch and strengthen the network year-round.
/ICYMI: Everything is coming up Blue
The Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and Hatch Blue launched the Maine Blue Biotech Studio, a U.S. first accelerator aimed at turning marine biotech ideas into viable businesses. The two-week equity-free program in Boothbay is backed by the Maine Technology Institute and includes nine months of virtual follow-on support. Applications are open until January 23, 2026.
Read the article in WeAreAquaculture here.
/Movers & Shakers🧂
Applications Open: 2025–26 Top Gun Program
The Maine Center for Entrepreneurs is accepting applications until December 2 for the 2025–26 Top Gun Program, a 15-week accelerator built to help Maine’s most promising founders scale faster. Participants gain access to experienced mentors, investor networks, and hands-on training to refine their business models and fuel growth.
Learn more and apply: mced.biz/top-gun
/Upcoming 📆
💡 Mainebiz 60 Ideas in 60 Minutes Forum
📍 Bangor, Maine | December 3, 2025
7:30 am to 10:00 am | Hilton Garden Inn, 250 Haskell Rd
Register here
💡 ELEVATE 2025: BerryDunn’s Half-Day Commerical Industry Summit
📍 Virtual | December 11, 2025
9:00 am to 2:30 pm | Gain key insights into the 2026 economic and market outlook, highlighting emerging trends and impacts from policy shifts and the rate environment. Register here.
Until next time, Maine Startups Insider Community, keep grinding. This is the way.
-Whit Richardson & Chris Philbrook