When Clint, Barbara and Chad Braidwood, co-owners of Saratoga Olive Oil Co., purchased property in Moreau last year, they knew that, in addition to housing their company’s warehouse and corporate offices there, they’d eventually open up a retail location in the space as well. Now, “eventually” has become “imminently,” as they prepare for the opening of a new outlet store at the location scheduled for this August.
Saratoga Olive Oil was founded by Clint, his wife Barbara and his brother Chad in 2011 after Clint and Barbara visited an olive oil store in Maine and fell in love with its sample-before-you-buy concept. “At the time, we were in the pharmaceutical field—actually all three of us were,” Clint, a Niskayuna native, says. “We were traveling all around the country and we saw this as possibly a way to be sedentary and raise a family. We saw that shop in October of 2010 and we were open by April of 2011 in Saratoga.” The following year, the trio opened a store in Burlington, VT that’s now run by Chad, and in 2014, opened a third location in Lake Placid that’s run by one of Clint and Chad’s friends from high school, Peter Fazio. They purchased the Moreau facility—the former home of Aquawood Pools located just off exit 17 of the Northway—in the spring of 2019, after their shipping operation outgrew their 2,500-square-foot facility in Saratoga.
The new store coming to Moreau will be sightly different than Saratoga Olive Oil’s other three locations. “It’ll be lots of bulk discounts—cases of things or six packs,” Barbara says. “We’ll have, of course, some of the same stuff that’s in our other shops as well. There’ll be a large variety of different gifts and oils and balsamics and sea salts to pick from.”
The Moreau warehouse is currently offering curbside pickup, Tuesday-Thursday from 10am-2pm, and the plan is to have the outlet store open daily from 9am-5pm. An exact date of the opening hasn’t been chosen yet, but Barbara says there will be a grand opening announcement made when the time comes.
