Arvid Brown
Room for Improvement | Portland, ME
SEPTEMBER 2023
Like so many teenagers looking for summer jobs, Arvid Brown started his career in hospitality washing dishes. He eventually began working in the kitchen, but wanted to learn more about front of house operations. While attending college in Boston, Brown picked up shifts as a barback and bartender to pay for trips to Boston cocktail standbys like Eastern Standard and Deep Ellum on his time off, falling in love with the craft of bartending. Wanting to take some time away from the industry, Brown traveled to Thailand to teach English before returning to the United States, this time to Portland, Maine. In 2013, Brown opened a seafood shack-themed food truck named Fishin’ Ships that operated seasonally, catering weddings, feeding music festivals, and hanging around the emerging brewery scene.
In his off season, Brown tended bar around the city at Ebb and Flow and Roustabout before accepting a bar manager position at Baharat, where he stayed for the next four years. With creative freedom, Brown experimented with ingredient-driven cocktails that complemented the Middle Eastern-influenced menu. But when the pandemic shut the restaurant down, Brown looked for another creative outlet. He was hosting tiki cocktail popups around town when he heard friend and fellow 2023 Rising Star Cyle Reynolds was opening Crispy Gài, and he joined the team as bar manager in 2021, serving tropical and Asian-inspired drinks. Always determined to one day open his own bar, Brown was finally ready to start looking for the perfect location. So when friend Nick Coffin shopped him the idea of a space right in the heart of Portland’s Old Port, the duo began formulating the concept for a cocktail-driven modern dive bar. Room for Improvement opened in March 2023, featuring riffs on classics, like his Gimlet with lime leaf-infused gin, coconut fat-washed gin, and lime cordial, while still offering classic, industry staple Boilermakers.
2023 StarChefs Coastal New England Rising Stars Award Winner
