Courtesy of Uncommon Grounds
By Paul Post
Emily Ellenbogen has done just about everything at Uncommon Grounds, from baking and kitchen prep work to set-up and hiring for the company’s newest store at 751 Upper Glen Street in Queensbury.
The site has quickly caught on with students, young professionals and small groups of seniors; anyone looking for a quiet place to work or simply relax and enjoy delicious fresh-roasted coffee and tempting baked goods, made on site from scratch.
“Uncommon Grounds is the ‘third place’ for customers,” Ellenbogen said. “You’ve got home, you’ve got work. Uncommon Grounds is the third place. We like people to feel comfortable here, sitting doing work or just relaxing where they don’t have to be pressured to do things at home or work. They’re here to do whatever they want.”
The spacious, 8,000-square-foot tastefully designed location fills a retail venue previously occupied by a Recovery Sports Grill restaurant whose walls were adorned with huge television screens and all sorts of sports memorabilia. That noisy atmosphere has been replaced by a much more cozy setting with handsome wood paneling, a dropped tin ceiling and hanging plants
The store opened on September 4 and occupies a corner space in the Glen Square plaza building owned by Albany-based Nigro Retail Properties. The large strip-mall type building is also home to Tractor Supply and Dollar Tree, and a Big Lots retail store that’s in the process of closing. The plaza also includes an adjacent Aldi’s supermarket.
Uncommon Grounds’ new Queensbury store is the northernmost of the Saratoga Springs-based company’s five locations. Founded by Dan Murphy in 1992, its other sites are at 402 Broadway in Saratoga Springs, 9 Clifton Country Road in Clifton Park, and Stuyvesant and University plazas on Western Avenue in Albany.
“The owner just wanted to expand farther north,” Ellenbogen said. “This good space was available and I’m sure having Lake George nearby was part of the decision.”
Glen Plaza is roughly a mile off Northway Exit 19, conveniently situated to capture tourists headed to Lake George and the Adirondacks at all times of years, in addition to the large local market.
Uncommon Grounds serves coffee from Central and South America, India and Indonesia along with Italian and French dark roasts.
Now in her seventh year with the company, Ellenbogen has held a variety of positions and worked at every one of Uncommon Grounds’ stores. Previously she was a shift leader, assistant manager at Clifton Park and company training leader, going to all the different stores to train employees.
So her new role managing the Queensbury site was a natural progression.
The store has created nearly three dozen jobs. But it was somewhat of a challenge to fill all the positions, a situation many employers are faced with in today’s labor shortage era.
“Half of the staff trained in Saratoga for a few months during track season, so they got a lot of experience with craziness,” Ellenbogen said, smiling. “But the last couple weeks before we opened was a rigorous round of interviews and hiring, pretty much every day.”
Now a month after the store’s opening, she’s extremely pleased with her employees’ performance.
“They all have a great attitude,” Ellenbogen said. “Everybody’s still very positive, doing their best and trying to do a good job even though it’s been crazy learning a new store, learning new things, being completely new to the company and training while trying to deal with the crowd. So I’m proud of my staff, too.”
Likewise, Ellenbogen said she’s greatly benefited from the company’s supportive culture. “That’s the thing I love about working here, so many people that care so much about the company,” she said. “I think that’s why we do so well. We’ve been around for so long that we’ve had a lot of time to perfect everything. There’s a lot of care that goes into it. We’ll retry recipes over and over again to make sure it’s perfect before we put it on the menu.”
“My bosses are great, also,” she said. “They care a lot about their staff. That makes it a very special place to be. At some places they talk about it being like family, but it really isn’t. Here I genuinely feel like it’s a family.”