Waldoboro, ME
Moody's Diner, which celebrated its 80th anniversary this summer, started out as a tiny lunch wagon located along old Route 1 in Waldoboro. Over the years that original structure has been expanded and renovated numerous times. While signs of the old wagon are covered now by the diner's counter, the history of Moody's still lies under the floor boards and in the wood and nails that date back to 1931 when the lunch wagon was built.

Moody's started as a family business that has grown much the same as the structure itself. For four generations the family has grown and expanded. Currently there are three generations working alongside one another, as seamlessly as the old and new wood in the building itself.

Moody's Diner is still family owned and operated. Of the 80 people on the staff this summer, 25 are part of the Moody family, according to General Manager Dan Beck.

Beck is one of the 25 Moodys; he's third generation, a grandson of the founders. On Monday morning, between the breakfast and the lunch rush, he sat down to talk about the diner. He said that one of the most asked questions to diner employees is "Are you a Moody?"

"People are very interested that we're still owned and operated by the family," Beck said. He said he's thought about having a T-shirt made up for the family members on the staff that says, "Yes, I am a Moody. No, you can't order from the 1930s menu." That menu is displayed on the diner place mats, and on it lobster costs 30 cents.

When Percy "P.B." and Bertha Moody started the business in 1927, it was the time of the Depression, their daughter Nancy Moody Genthner said Monday. "Everybody was thinking of everything they could possibly do, especially around here, to earn a living," she said. Her father did "anything he could do to support a family," she said. He first built three little cabins along old Route 1 and rented them out for $1 a person. In 1930 he opened a tea room to serve the guests at the cabins and the passersby on the highway.

In Bertha Moody's mini history of the diner she wrote that in either 1931 or 1932 they opened a "little lunch wagon ... and sold hot dogs and hamburgers through the day."

When Route 1 was re-routed in 1934, P.B. promptly bought land connecting the cabins to the new route, built a road and moved the little lunch wagon to where Moody's Diner is today.

The diner now seats 104 customers. On a busy summer day it can serve as many as 1,300 people. Moody's has become a local institution; the same tourists return summer after summer, and a group of year-round regulars populate the diner every morning at 5 a.m. when it opens. In the 1970s Moody's gained publicity after being featured in the book "Road Food." And in 2005 the Moody family won the Maine Restaurant Association's Restaurateur of the Year Award.

Not all the Moodys were necessarily interested in the restaurant business. Genthner told the story of her brother Alvah. As a child he didn't enjoy working with animals on the family farm, so he made a deal with his brother David. Alvah would do all the restaurant work, and David would take care of the animals. After World War II, Alvah became one of two chefs for the restaurant, and worked six days a week for 30 years. He finally retired in the 1990s.

The family does believe in their product, which Genthner called "regular old-fashioned cooking." She said the business "builds on itself ... but it wouldn't if we didn't have good food. At reasonable prices."

Beck said the reason Moody's Diner has survived for so long is precisely because it is a family business. "In the business world you're generally evaluating things in terms of dollars and cents and profit," he said. "But when you're working with family that can't always be the bottom line."

The Moodys' dedication to their family business comes through to their customers. "I think they do notice it," Beck said. Customers notice when he's working a little extra and say things like "You're a Moody, aren't you? You're part of the family. I can tell."

The reasons to keep working in the business and keep the diner going vary throughout the family. For Genthner it's "a way of life. It's what we do, we grew up doing it," she said.

For Beck it was more of a career choice. "I was in the pastoral ministry before this," he said. "Almost six years ago I came back here." At that time Genthner was managing the kitchen crew and Beck's mother, Judy Moody Beck, was managing the dining room crew.

Said Beck, "And neither of them really wanted to keep doing that, so I said, 'Well, we'll come back. We'll try it.' I've been managing the full crew for six years." He said it wasn't that he wanted to leave the ministry. "To be honest with you, it was my belief that God was calling me back here for a time, to work here," he said.

Throughout its history, Moody's has been driven by what the customers want. "Everything has gone from day one, in terms of what people wanted," Genthner said. "To meet the public requests." For example, that morning Beck had responded to a request from some customers to have six pieces of pie to go. Usually the limit is four, but since the customers had two separate bills, they hoped Beck would bend the rules for them. And he did.

The Moody's paraphernalia, gift shop and frozen pies to go were all responses to customer desires. Once the staff same-day mailed their homemade whoopie pies to a man in Biddeford, though Genthner noted that it would have cost less if the man had driven to Waldoboro himself.

With so many members of one family involved in the business, it would be easy for feuding to occur, both Beck and Genthner said. "But we have a pretty solid family, we care about each other," Genthner said. "We don't want to have any ill feelings. It's not worth it." And Beck agreed. "There are very few things that are worth feuding over."

The family makes decisions about the diner together, mostly by discussing things openly. "I think we look for the majority on the big [decisions]," Beck said.

Looking to the future of Moody's, Beck said, "I've been talking to the fourth generation. I'm looking at [them], seeing who might be interested." He wants to encourage them to think about coming on board at the restaurant. He believes that it will survive in the family or not at all. "I think it either passes down to the next generation ... or it will be something different," he said. But he said there are no plans for selling the business any time soon.

Genthner said she got a phone call recently from somebody in Portland asking, "If you could make a profit on your business would you be interested in selling?" When she heard that, Genthner said, "I just laughed."

Originally published online here: http://knox.villagesoup.com/Community/story.cfm?storyID=97410