Gerri Nadeau
A Dog, a Dream, and The County
Owner & Founder Timber Candle Bar, Inc.
Community Spotlight: Gerri Nadeau
There is a specific kind of magic that happens when a stranger sits down next to you at a candle bar, and twenty minutes later you are laughing together about which fragrance smells more like the Allagash in October. That magic is not an accident. It is exactly what Gerri Nadeau set out to build.
Gerri is the founder of Timber Candle Bar, an Aroostook County business tucked at 7 Dow Siding Road in Caribou that opened its doors in May 2025. The concept is simple on the surface: guests come in, choose their vessel, pick their fragrances, and pour their own candles under guidance. But the experience Gerri is actually selling runs much deeper than wax and wick. She is selling the space itself, the conversation it starts, and the kind of socializing that has become surprisingly rare. “We sell the experience, the space, and the socializing concept,” she says. And if the growing roster of repeat customers is any measure, people are buying.
Roots & Beginnings
Gerri spent years working across two worlds: one rooted in the agricultural rhythms of Aroostook County, and another that involved watching a workforce of hundreds make the transition back to in-person connection after years of remote work. She saw firsthand how much people had lost the habit of simply being around each other, how much relearning it took just to be comfortable in a room full of strangers again.
Then she took a trip to Indianapolis and walked into a candle bar. She watched people who had arrived alone leave as something closer to friends. She saw what a shared, tactile, low-pressure activity could do to dissolve the awkwardness that had settled into so much of public life post-pandemic. She came home with an idea she couldn’t shake.
“I really want to see our folks get out and do more, affordably and fun,” she says. That sentence, plain and direct as anything you would hear in Aroostook County, is the entire business plan.
Why the Name Timber
Ask Gerri about the name and she will tell you about a dog.
Timber is a 152-pound Bernese Mountain Dog, a breed known affectionately as a “velcro dog” for the way they refuse to leave your side. He was a gift to Gerri’s husband Randy, and the moment he arrived, the name clicked for the business in more ways than one. Aroostook County is timber country. Wood and forest are woven into the identity of the region. And Gerri’s candles are made with wood wicks; the kind that crackle softly when they burn, like a fire you actually want to sit beside.
“Our customers love him so much,” she says of Timber, who is something of a living mascot. He also, it turns out, has the shiniest coat of any dog on the payroll, a side effect of cleaning up the pet-safe wax that comes with running a candle bar where four-legged guests are part of the culture.
Timber the dog, timber the landscape, the timber-crackle of a wood wick burning down. The name holds all of it.
The Space Is the Product
What makes Timber Candle Bar different from simply buying a candle in a shop is the doing of it. Guests mix fragrances, make choices, talk through what they want, and walk away with something they built themselves. It is participatory in a way that most retail experiences simply are not, and it creates a natural opening for conversation between people who might otherwise never speak.
Gerri designed it that way deliberately. She will tell you that after years of watching people forget how to be around each other, she wanted to build a place where meeting people where they are is the whole point. Not a bar where the pressure is on you to perform, not an event where you need to know someone already. Just a table, some wax, a hundred fragrance options, and enough time to figure out that the person sitting next to you is also trying to decide between Up North and Fiddlehead.
For the youngest guests, there are flameless options too. Kids can come in and mix to their hearts’ content, and if her grandchildren’s visits are any indication, they will immediately spend whatever they earned on the gumball machine.
The Scents of The County
One of the quieter achievements of Timber Candle Bar is that it has done something most retail businesses never manage: it has translated a place into a product. Gerri’s signature scents are not generic spa smells or department store standards. They are Aroostook County, bottled.
- Potato Blossom: earthy, slightly floral, and sweet, the smell of the fields in Fort Fairfield when the blossoms are out and the whole county smells briefly like something from a dream.
- Fiddlehead: aquatic, earthy, a little mossy; the exact sensation of walking a trail in early spring before the canopy closes in.
- Up North: cedar and smooth smoke, the smell of a camp fire in the north woods when the air is cold and the stars are out.
- Sun Drenched Linen: warm and golden, the scent of a good afternoon, unhurried.
These are not descriptions from a marketing brochure. They are Gerri describing scents she built herself, for a community she knows by feel.
What does local support mean for small organizations like yours?
“It really makes the whole thing work. Motivating and keeps you grounded and going, while letting us know we add value. We are more involved with the people; local people supporting local people.”
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A County That Shows Up
Gerri does not wait to be asked. When the community calls, she answers it.
Timber Candle Bar has shown up at Main Street Mania at The Northeastland Hotel, at holiday season pop-ups in Caribou, and at civic events across the county. She buys pages in the project yearbook. She donates to local causes. She was at the Caribou Cares About Kids event. And every time the Potato Blossom Festival comes around in Fort Fairfield, she is there, which makes perfect sense, given that there is a candle named for it.
“Every civic activity really inspires me,” she says. “We are passionate about all things the County.”
That passion is not abstract. It shows up in the decisions she makes, the hours she keeps, and the way she talks about her customers; not as a market, but as people she is genuinely rooting for.
The Team Behind the Flame
Running a candle bar is not a solo act, and Gerri will be the first to tell you that Timber’s success belongs to the people around her.
Randy, her husband, is, as she puts it without any hesitation, her biggest cheerleader. He has been behind her through the long hours, the catered events that require three to four hours of prep the night before, and the medical crisis that hit their family while the business was still finding its footing. That period of juggling serious family illness alongside bookkeeping, marketing, inventory, customer care, and the hundred other things that go into running a small business; was the hardest thing she has faced. They got through it. “Thankfully she is healthy and happy now,” Gerri says, and moves forward.
Morgan Bartlett, her assistant manager, helps design fragrances, coordinates events, and handles the paperwork and is the right hand woman to both Sue and Jake. Without her steadfast efforts, the Candle Bar and County Ag Store would definitely not be the same experience the guests have come to love. Sue Audet is, in Gerri’s words, a phenomenal superstar; she does charcuterie boards, helps pour candles and wax melts, and brings an energy that carries the whole room. McKenzie Cole, an honors student from Caribou, is engaged, hardworking, and exactly the kind of young person that makes you feel good about the County’s future. And Jake Ollette has a signature scent at the bar named after him: lemon blackberry whiskey.
And then there is Timber himself, who keeps the floors wax-free and the atmosphere warm, and whose shiny coat is proof that the job has its perks.
What Keeps Her Going
Gerri’s parents taught her that you work for the things you want, that integrity is not optional, and that the American dream is something you build with your hands and your hours. She carries all of that with her into the business every single day.
But what actually gets her up in the morning is the customers.
She talks about a couple who drive up from somewhere out of the County every few months to visit family. When they arrive, their standing plan for their date night is Timber Candle Bar. Not a restaurant. Not a movie. Here. Making candles together, every time.
“Everybody who walks in the door comes and leaves as a friend,” she says. “And that is super important.”
What Comes Next
Gerri has a vision that is bigger than Caribou.
She wants to see Timber Candle Bar grow into a franchise model, one designed to be genuinely affordable so that other Mainers can bring the concept into their own communities. She is looking toward Ellsworth, Bar Harbor, Calais. Then eventually Vermont. Then the White Mountains of New Hampshire. She sees what the candle bar format does for people; the resocialization, the connection, the simple pleasure of making something with your hands in good company, and she wants more communities to have access to it.
The first milestone on that path, the one she calls her proudest achievement, is almost complete: the Timber Candle Bar website, fourteen months in the making, is nearly finished. For a business built on in-person experience, getting the digital presence right has taken real patience. It’s almost there.
“Seeing Timber Candle Bar go from an idea to an actual full business, and seeing that dream come true,” she says, “that is what I am most proud of.”
Visit Timber Candle Bar at 7 Dow Siding Road in Caribou, open Monday through Saturday. Follow along on facebook, share their posts, and tell a friend; because local people supporting local people is how this all works.
Also, don’t forget to use the promo code TCAG at checkout if you book a room at the Northeastland Hotel after visiting Gerri at Timber Candle Bar and Boutique!
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