GREENE – Like a sailor ogling a new boat, Chef Phil Wilbur gazes upon his twin stainless-steel kettles.

Each sit 5 feet tall, stretches 4 feet across and holds 150 gallons of liquid. Inside, an agitating arm awaits Wilbur’s ingredients.

“The arm makes this possible,” Wilbur said, peering inside while conjuring images of a spoon big enough to stir a sea of soup or chowder. “If I didn’t have this, I’d need an oar.”

Wilbur is gearing up to distribute three of his creations – butternut squash and broccoli cream soup, haddock chowder and Cajun-style sweet potato with chicken soup – to restaurants around the region.

“When everybody else is thinking of ways to cut back and downsize, we’re growing,” Wilbur said. Once production is up and running, he plans to hire between four and six full-time staffers.

“That could easily increase,” he said. “There’s a market for this kind of thing.”

These days, he’s perfecting his recipes, smoothing out production in a new facility on Route 202 and and talking with possible distributors about his soup.

It’s a language he knows, having worked as a chef for more than 30 years.

In 1978, Wilbur created Sedgley Place with his wife, Lorraine. The couple built a reputation for fine dining and a menu strengthened with locally grown produce.

Soups and chowders became an important part of every meal. Phil Wilbur created new recipes, often experimenting with flavor combinations. The more he tried, the more he discovered.

“For me, it’s just a chance to get real creative,” he said. “It’s a passion. I just try more and more and more.”

Even the sale of the restaurant, after 25 years of long hours in the kitchen, didn’t end his soup obsession.

“We sold that thinking we were getting out of the business altogether,” Wilbur said.

The respite lasted less than three years.

In 2005, the couple formed a partnership with their daughter, Kirsten Shovilin, and her husband, Joe. Together they created Hurricane’s Cafe & Deli. The place proved popular. Besides the four partners, it employs four full-time staffers and several part-timers.

It led Wilbur to the wholesale business, Hurricane’s Soup & Chowder.

“It takes a lot of work to do it right,” he said. Some big companies sell soups that can be made easily in a restaurant. But there are few that use natural ingredients such as real cream, natural fish stocks and fresh vegetables.

“We want to be a company that is thinking about the ingredients going in,” Wilbur said.

In December, the family rehabbed a warehouse space beside the deli, converting it into a pristine production facility. The kettles sit in the back, behind several stainless-steel processing tables and machines that preserve and seal the soup in 10- by 20-inch bags that each holds more than a gallon.

The production area and the process have been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, a rarity for Maine. Once the soup begins leaving in boxes – two bags for each box – Wilbur hopes to perfect the process enough to ensure the soup will be fresh for a full month, as long is it stays refrigerated.

Then, he plans to get back to work, expanding the variety of soups that will be made in his kettles. It’s what he loves.

“Soup is second nature,” he said.