Rick and Lori Beckwith, empty nesters in Wellsboro, were looking for something to fill their time—and fill their stomachs. When most couples get hungry for an appetizer, dinner, or dessert, they simply order them.

Rick and Lori do it differently. They find an empty storefront, brainstorm a crazy dream, and with no prior experience, which never stops them, start a food business.

First was the appetizer. In 2015, Rick and Lori opened the Main Street Olive Oil Company at 75 Main Street, offering ninety-five oils and balsamic vinegars to sample, with gourmet dinners on the side to get to know more folks.

Next (slightly out of order) came dessert. In 2019, they opened the Main Street Creamery at 17 Main Street, serving sixteen mouth-watering, handmade ice-cream flavors and joyfully mentoring and parenting a whole class of high schoolers to scoop 200 gallons a week, in between cooking them dinners and proudly snapping their prom photos.

Finally, it was time for dinner.

In May 2022, the Beckwiths opened Beck’s Bistro at 104 Main Street, offering delectable gourmet meals, a full, brick-walled bar, and live music to locals and visitors. It’s a short walk (nine doors down and across the street) from where Beck’s diners may have bought Main Street olive oil earlier in the day. Fifteen doors farther down from the olive oil store, next to the Wellsboro Diner, is the creamery where Rick and Lori’s bistro diners may be headed to the couple’s Main Street ice cream shop for dessert.

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Main Street, Wellsboro

The odds are good that if you’re strolling on the town’s historic main boulevard, a gaslit gem that enabled Wellsboro to beat out Montpelier, Vermont, Lambertville, New Jersey, and Gettysburg in a USA Today poll of the ten most enchanting small towns in the Northeast, you’re digesting something Rick and Lori made, thinking about it, or seeing your reflection in one of their storefronts.

Mountain Home sat down with Rick and Lori at Beck’s Bistro, at an outdoor table with a view of the town green—dining alfresco is another one of their inspirations—to discuss how their love of the town, coupled with a desire to provide a continuing draw for the area’s vital tourist industry, made them a critical part of the Main Street landscape. And to learn what’s next, because with Rick and Lori, a couple burning with energy and one new brainstorm after another, there’s always a next.

The Beckwiths, who met back in 1997 through mutual friends in the most Northern Tier of ways—at a pond party while Rick was home on leave from the US Navy—take little credit for the ways they’ve transformed the Wellsboro downtown culture over the last several years.

“Our philosophy,” says Lori, “is that people want an experience.”

They come by their love of the area honestly.

Lori grew up in Wellsboro and Rick in nearby Bradford County. After raising children in the Athens area and living for a time in Virginia near Rick’s Naval assignment, the couple returned to the area to stay in 2014. Rick had recently retired after twenty-five years in the military. He then bought a laser engraving machine to tinker with as a hobby. As any burgeoning entrepreneur might, Rick opened a booth of his wares at Dickens of a Christmas that year.

“We had a blast at Dickens! That kind of gave us the bug,” says Rick. The space they currently inhabit adjacent to Timeless Destination became available, and the couple decided to open Senior’s Creations and the Main Street Olive Oil Company. The name Senior’s Creations reflects Rick’s rank as Senior Chief Petty Officer. During his military service, Rick had spent a six-month deployment in Crete and developed a real interest in olive oil there.

“I learned how it’s grown, how it’s pressed,” he says. “I was in a place where the Mediterranean diet was popular, and then we just jumped in.” This inaugural business opened doors for the first time on Dickens day 2015. As Rick says, “Nobody told us better.”

Lori worked in the store and continued her own nutrition consulting business as well. With the retail piece in full swing, the Beckwiths expanded the operation to offer their popular “Just a Taste” dinners. Participants would schedule an evening out with friends to enjoy a six-course tapas-style meal that included education on the oils and balsamics at every course, as well as recipes to take home.

“It worked,” says Rick. “And it really grew our business.”

That was only the beginning of the team’s boundless store of brainstorms. “Rick came to me with an idea. He wanted to do Italian ice on Friday and Saturday outside the olive oil store,” says Lori. That was 2018, and they bought a cart and sold the ice all summer. They just really wanted to do it “as something different for the town,” says Rick. In truth, many of the duo’s business ideas have little to do with an eye to the profit, but, rather, what new, relevant, or necessary product or service they could bring to the town they love and the tourists who flock there.

As it turns out, one frozen treat leads to another. “At that time, there were lots of stores vacant downtown,” says Rick. The Beckwiths hated seeing it. The owner of the building housing the olive oil store also owned the vacant, historic Shattuck House next to the famous Wellsboro Diner, and he was looking to do something with it. Says Lori, “Rick had always wanted to make ice cream. So, I came home and said ‘I just rented the Shattuck building. You have six months to get it ready for Memorial Day.’”

The couple, who’d formed relationships with lots of customers over the years at the olive oil store, couldn’t have predicted the instant success of the Main Street Creamery they opened in the spring of 2019. The line that first day, in fact, extended out the door and all the way around past the Diner. They quickly learned a great deal.

At that time the process of preparing and deep freezing ice cream was lengthy. “It took two days to make a tub of ice cream, and we were out,” laughs Rick of that first opening day. So he stayed up all night to make more for the next day’s demand, freezing for less time than he’d planned. “Now,” says Rick, “we can do it faster. We couldn’t do what we could do now.”

A matching dairy grant the couple obtained in 2021 allowed them to transform the basement into a streamlined, modern production facility. Now, the crew at the Creamery produces and sells eighty tubs a week, which equals about 200 gallons, and the store remains open from April through December’s Christmas on Main Street celebration. The sixteen flavors available to dip are ever evolving and revolving, using seasonal ingredients and other inspirations, and range from vanilla and toasted coconut to rhubarb honeycomb custard and chocolate chili almond.

It’s another way the Beckwiths create an experience for visitors.

For most, two booming businesses, plus a consulting business and family around the country, would be plenty to stay busy. Lori explains, though, that when the Red Skillet, the restaurant occupying the Deane Center space before Beck’s Bistro, closed and had a sales agreement with someone, she felt a slight pang of disappointment, like maybe she’d missed an opportunity. When that sale didn’t work out, they decided to explore the opportunity themselves.

“The problem is, we don’t like to see anything empty or closed,” explains Rick. So they bought it. With a two-week turn-over from closing, Rick put in new floors and created custom wooden tops for all the tables and the existing bar.

That restaurant now offers lunch six days a week and dinner five, with cocktail and coffee options, daily specials, and an array of entertainment throughout the typical week.

What’s There to Do?

Where does this drive to operate so many thriving businesses come from, and how does the couple manage to remain sane while juggling so many pins in the air? Lori says it’s a simple feeling the two share.

“We both really love Wellsboro. We understand it’s a tourist town, and to keep tourism alive, there have to be things for them to do.”

Coupling that with their aforementioned philosophy that people are looking for experiences, the Beckwiths have built their business model around providing people with something engaging and, according to Rick, “something to keep it relevant.”

At Senior’s Creations and the Main Street Olive Oil Company, you’ll find the idea that you can take your time there, tasting your way through a vast selection of olive oils, balsamic vinegars, and spice blends, from the savory to the sweet. The staff is prepared to discuss the intricacies of the products, like how they are produced and how they would be best used at home. Likewise, the store has a wide selection of Rick’s laser engraved wood products.

Down the street at the Main Street Creamery, the objective is to not only provide exceptional service, but also to make entering the historic building itself an experience. Wellsboro folk all have a history there from businesses of the past, and, as the couple says, “we manage to hire great staff.” Indeed, at the Creamery alone, each year they hire fourteen young people, which they refer to as that year’s “class.” Lori and Rick reminisce that in the earlier years of the business before opening the restaurant, they developed strong relationships with each class even outside of the Creamery.

“We used to go to their games,” says Rick. “And cook them dinner!” chimes in Lori.

During covid, they tried to stay focused on connecting to the community and providing its people with something to break up the long days at home. So, they offered a once-a-week ice cream pint pick-up behind the building all summer long.

Later, Rick wanted to add an old-fashioned soda fountain to the building. They purchased a 1950s-era Walgreen’s soda fountain out of Pittsburgh, which Rick has since refurbished. It’s open in the Creamery on weekends.

At Beck’s Bistro, the couple intend to offer hungry and thirsty patrons an experience that is more than just a great meal. The menu changes every eight to ten weeks, with many customers dropping in often in an effort to try all the tasty offerings before new ones come on.

Then there’s the live music. “We knew from the beginning we wanted to do music,” Lori says. Hence, each Wednesday, they highlight a happy hour music offering of local musicians and singers. Fall through spring, the Beck’s team fills restaurant seats by offering team trivia on Tuesday nights. Likewise, each night the menu is slightly different, from flatbread pizza and wings for happy hour to sit-down gourmet dinners Thursdays through Saturdays.

These experience-builders are focused on making someone’s time in Wellsboro, whether they live here or are visiting for a few days, special and memorable. “We want them to leave happy,” says Lori of their customers in all three locations.

That commitment to the customer extends to the community at large, too. In fact, there are few Wellsboro residents who don’t connect in some way with the couple. Lori is associated with the Wellsboro Area Chamber of Commerce and serves on the borough’s GROW (Growth Resources of Wellsboro) board. She also serves on the committee for Christmas on Main Street, for which Rick makes the souvenir ornaments.

Lori also highlights the importance in maintaining a good rapport with other businesses in town, noting, “We patronize other businesses, shop local, and promote others.” She says they actively try not to do entertainment on the same nights others offer it. The Beckwiths understand that when all businesses do well, everybody wins.

“Most business owners in Wellsboro understand the importance of tooting the horn of other businesses,” Lori says.

Lori and Rick also have a heart for the Deane Center for the Performing Arts, the building in which Beck’s Bistro resides. Lori says if they know a Deane Center show isn’t sold out, they’ll talk up the event to dinner patrons. They’ve frequently catered and offered bar service for Deane Center happenings.

In late 2023, Lori approached a Deane Center board member about working together on an event she’d had in her mind for a while—to close the building down and operate a private 1920s-style Speakeasy for one night. The idea and the collaboration took off, growing to be a successful sellout and generating appreciated and needed funds for the Deane Center. The Beckwiths weren’t concerned with making lots of money for themselves, but were concerned with helping the Deane and making people happy, while bringing something novel, fun, and exciting to the town they love.

“We’re always looking…you have to look at things they do in other places in the country,” says Rick. “How can we do that in a small town?”

While Lori and Rick have worked hard to develop ways to excite and enhance the community they love, they take little credit for that. Rick thinks, in fact, one of the greatest ways they foster community is in the training they give to the young people that work for them, particularly at the Creamery. When new employees join them in the spring, Rick says, “Some are so shy they can’t talk to anybody.” Over the course of a season, Lori and Rick hope they are able to have a positive impact on those young people’s social skills and ability to work with customers and others.

“We try to model how to be members of a community,” says Lori.

With so many irons in the fires of the Tioga County community, the question may be how the couple finds time to breathe. The Beckwiths believe it’s by surrounding themselves with great people that they are able to stay relaxed.

“We manage to hire great kids, I have a great sister who always helps with whatever I need, and we have a great manager at the olive oil store,” says Lori.

Rick admits the couple spend most of their time together working, but that they wouldn’t change that. “This is what we have fun doing. We like being busy. We like working together.”

And that goes for their employees, too, adds Lori. “We surround ourselves with good people, and we want to work with them.”

You might think that people so busy working and running three thriving businesses without much respite would have little time to ponder what’s next. Not so. The pair are always looking at what will be the next big idea to bring something new to the community. According to Lori, “Rick is the creative idea person about everything—what we can do next, how to improve, and it never stops. He has an idea every day.” Fortunately, we have plenty of experiences to keep us busy while we wait for what comes next. Lucky us.