New Way Lunch closing its Queensbury location

By Mark Frost, Chronicle Editor

Family-owned mainstay New Way Lunch will close its Queensbury location at the end of December when its lease on Upper Glen Street expires.

“It’s just too much,” said Peter Gazetos, who operates the 103-year-old fourth-generation hot dog specialist with his wife Susan and their son Nick and daughter Ali Gazetos Mineo.

“There’s not enough time in the day. With food prices up 40 percent, labor, energy, the whole thing — and the difficulty in finding help, it just didn’t make sense for us anymore” to operate all three restaurants.

He said they will reemphasize South Street, where the business began, as well as Warrensburg, which Peter said operates “on a different model,” as more of a diner, with a very strong breakfast business plus lunch. Susan Gazetos operates the Warrensburg business.

The South Street store was waylaid by Covid. “34 months it was shuttered,” said Peter. He said pre-Covid son Nick had the shop humming; now they want to give it full attention again.

“We’re excited about downtown. We want to be a bigger part of it,” said Ali.

Peter said, “We’ve got some great ideas, we want to do some events, we want to be involved with the downtown business people, but we can’t implement any of it” with the Queensbury shop’s demands.

“It’s too difficult to operate,” he said.

He said they haven’t had time to think about marketing and advertising.

Peter declined to discuss specific plans for South Street, but Ali said they will “expand the hours at night — we’re really hoping to get back open late on Friday and Saturday, ’til midnight.”

They plan to resume six day a week operation, Monday through Saturday, adding Monday as they get up to speed.

Peter said the South Street store has ready advantages. “We’ve got the [building] addition, we got the walk-in cooler, we’ve got the outdoor seating, the parking lot’s in good shape. So we’ve got, potentially, we can right the ship rather quickly — but we’ve got to get down there and be able to do what we do.”

Ali runs the Queensbury store; Nick runs the one on South Street.

Ali quips, “For a long time me and Nick always thought we’ll be fine working together as long as we’re not in the same building — we’re better off in separate buildings. And now, every day, ‘Oh, I wish I was there with you.’ We, like, completely switched. I just want to work with him.”

She says of the Queensbury store. “This is a big building. On South Street, you’re overstaffed with four people. Here, you’re just [barely] staffed with six,” with reliable workers increasingly hard to come by.

Ali said, “We’re hoping to retain most of the staff that I have here and bring them” to South Street.

They will lose the Queensbury shop’s drive-up window, but the Gazetoses said that part of the business peaked several years ago and amounts to about a quarter of its business now.

“People will make adjustments,” Peter said. “They’ll get on their phone, you know, call all these delivery services.”

Closing the Queensbury operation, says Peter, “It’s sad, but you can’t look at it that way. I think it’s going to be a rebirth of the downtown location, which is what we want. We’re committed to downtown.”

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