AUBURN - After a whirlwind year, including a spot that ran again and again on the Food Network, Eminger Berries shut its doors this month, leaving customers wanting.

Susan Eminger and her popular dessert-stuffed strawberries appeared on Paula Deen's "Paula's Home Cooking" and in the new Deen Bros. Cookbook. Bobby and Jamie Deen were in town last July to film at the Black Watch.

Cristy Bourget, the city sanitarian in Auburn, spoke to Eminger on Wednesday.

"They have closed, and she is moving to Texas," Bourget said. She declined to say if Eminger offered a reason, out of respect to her.

Multiple attempts to reach Eminger were unsuccessful. The Auburn house at 9 Grove St., where she had her retail business, is listed for sale.

The closure seemed to come abruptly almost three weeks ago when her Web site came down.

Jeremy Usher, founder and creative director at Firefly, a Web host and design company in Damariscotta, said emingerberries.com continued to see lots of traffic, even as a blank page.

When the business was going, reruns on the Food Network increased hits. Eminger said in an interview last year that she did most of her high-end berry business online.

Back on June 3, Usher saw a Google trends report for the U.S. that listed the "The Sopranos" final episode as the 14th most-searched phrase on Google.

Number 15: Eminger berries.

"She seems to have vanished without a trace to most people," Usher said. "It's a shame to let the buzz expire. Everybody's talking about the berries."

He said Eminger indicated to him she might start over again; he hopes she does.

Eminger Berries had been scheduled to be one of the featured eateries at the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council's Business After Hours event last week.

"Her product was amazing," spokesman Paul Badeau said. "We had featured her in one of our television spots on the creative economy. Needless to say, we had to pull it off the air."

He said Eminger had always been generous with her time and talents. After filming the TV spot in the WGME studio, she gave the camera crew a box of berries.

The popular online travel forum TripAdvisor had two pages of comments on Wednesday devoted to discussion on whether Eminger had closed.

"Bummer ... We are planning a wedding and thought these with be perfect for the event," wrote a person from Worcester, Mass., using the name DonnieBall. "Hopefully they will resurface and we can all eat some."

Web posters in Little Rock, Ark., and Sidney, Ohio, complained about being billed for berries they never received. The Better Business Bureau listed only one complaint with the company in the past year, and marked it as "resolved."