About Pete's

Why only Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont?

Pete's Restaurant Equipment services only the Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont areas, because we believe in small town values. Treating our customers like a friend who lives in our own neighborhood. Our business is a small family owned company and we've been that way for over 30 years. We like to deal with customers on a "face-to-face" basis, not just an email account or a phone number across the country.

Our business practice is to "service what we sell", and we are unable to go further than New England in time to repair your equipment if needed. Nor will we ship any item 'sight unseen'.

How did we start out?

Pete's Restaurant Equipment started as Gene's Corner Store way back in 1973. Well, okay not really, but the owner did. Pete Levesque and his wife bought their first business at the age of 25. It was a small-town corner store with a lunch counter in Lewiston, Maine. Two years later, Pete purchased Victor's Market; a grocery store/ deli, also selling lobsters and clams, which came from another store Pete had acquired. He ran a general store, with breakfast-lunch place almost right on the wharfs in West Point, Maine.

After nine years with those businesses, the "Pete's" name began. Pete opened Pete's Seafood Market in 1985. Pete's sold seafood of all sorts, and a variety of groceries. Well, you need lots of ice to keep all that fish fresh, right? So, why not get ice from your own ice business? That's just what Pete did. In 1990, there was a pizza shop renting the space next to Pete, which went out of business and Pete took over. He started selling the ice machines from the ice business and the pizza equipment from the pizza business and got the equipment itch. He filled the pizza shop dining room with equipment. He filled the old kitchen with equipment. He then filled a building next door! And then a warehouse downtown!

Five years later, the equipment business took over. Pete moved the whole operation into a 25,000 square foot warehouse in North Conway, New Hampshire. Now with the business centralized in one location, 20 years of store and food experience, and over 15 years of equipment experience behind him, Pete's Equipment is now the largest new and used Restaurant and Store equipment business in New Hampshire!