The fourth location of Junior’s Bar & Grill opened last week in East Greenbush with little advance promotion, but it still attracted approximately 200 customers. The following day: 350. The staff of about 70, some of whom started training two weeks ago at the Junior’s 7 miles north in North Greenbush, are girding for an opening weekend that will pack the newest incarnation of the 25-year-old sports-bar brand to its capacity of nearly 200, where 30 TVs look down across a 24-seat bar with 16 draft lines, high-tops, tables and booths, and milled-wainscotting walls hung with vintage sports equipment. Outside design elements include baseball stadium seats from Camden Yards in Baltimore.
Almost half of the 7,000-plus-square-foot space is devoted to kitchen, prep and storage areas, necessary to feed such a large dining room from a menu of familiar bar food that is the same as at other Junior’s, minus pizza.
The first Junior’s opened in 2000 on upper Madison Avenue in Albany, where it became a cornerstone, along with the Cafe Madison brand, of the growth of BMT Hospitality, an Albany restaurant group with holdings that also include Albany Ale & Oyster, Albany Pour House, Ama Cocina and the pizzeria Spinner’s.
The East Greenbush Junior’s is at 580 Columbia Turnpike, a multibuilding complex on Routes 9 and 20 called Town Center on Twenty that includes dozens of expensive, fully occupied apartments upstairs and street-level retail. In the building next door is the third Cafe Madison, due to open by Sept. 1, according to Frank DeLuca and John Dollard. The two have the same title at BMT, director of restaurants, but distinct duties: DeLuca oversees hiring (aka “talent acquisition”), the front-of-house experience and service, while Dollard handles operational and logistical duties, including computer systems, working with third-party apps for ordering and promotions…