How Two Friends Took Over an East Boothbay Inn

In this episode of the Maine Famous Podcast, April sits down with Matt Partridge and Ryan Edwards, the new owners of Five Gables Inn in East Boothbay, Maine.The two longtime friends talk about what it’s actually like to step into ownership of a beloved coastal Maine inn with decades of returning guests and a reputation already firmly in place.Over the course of the conversation, they discuss the pressure of preserving tradition while modernizing the guest experience, the realities of staffing and housing in Maine’s tourism economy, and the unexpected lessons they learned after arriving in Boothbay.They also share stories about proposal weekends, repeat guests who’ve been visiting for 30 years, lobster dinners at the inn’s cottage, and the kinds of porch conversations that turn into lasting memories.“One minute you’re serving breakfast,” Ryan says. “The next, someone’s yelling that there’s a leak upstairs and you need a wrench.”