Two Employees, Tony Christian and Dan Bowles Wait on Customers Today at Coffee-Me-Up. Both Are Undergraduate Students at USM, Portland.

A Favorite – Baklava – is $3.50 Per Piece.

“Delight” a Wonderful Sandwich Containing Tomato, Arugula, Avacado, Lemon Mayo, Goat Cheese and Cucumbers on Cibata Bread Using a Pannini Press. $7.50.

Mateo Hodo came to this country from Albania with his family when he was sixteen years old.  About l l/2 years ago he and his wife started a successful business – Coffee Me Up – 221 Cumberland Avenue – on the east end of Portland.  Next month Hodo, 32,  and his wife are expecting their first child – a boy – to be born in Portland.

Mr. Hodo is one of the many immigrants who has successfully assimilated himself into  the metropolitan  Portland area.

Local Immigrants  contribute $1.2 billion to the areas’s GDP in 2016 and paid $133 million in federal taxes and $62 million in state and local taxes, according to a new report by the New American Economy, (NAE) by the Portland office of Economic Opportunity and the Portland Chamber of Commerce.

In addition to their financial contributions, the new report outlines the important role immigrants and refugees play in the Portland labor force and as drivers of population growth.  In the City of Portland and the surrounding area, the foreign-born population accounted for more than 75% of population growth from 2011 to 2016 and in the metro area, though they make up just 4.6 percent of the population, immigrants account for 5.1% of all workers in Science Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields and industries where Maine is facing significant labor shortages.

In fact, there are eleven (11) open STEM positions for every one unemployed STEM worker.  The report also shows that immigrants in the Portland Metro area fill key jobs in accessing the skills spectrum, from teachers to housekeepers.

Mr. Hodo owns the “Coffee – Me – Up – Business, while local real estate developer Crandall Toothaker owns the building in which it is located.