More Growth is Brewing at COMMON ROOTS

by Drew Wardle for Glens Falls TODAY

It was the calm before the storm - a sunny Friday afternoon with expected heavy snowfall later in the day. Even still, the Common Roots Brewery taproom was packed to the brim with satisfied patrons who were ready to start the weekend off right.

Amid the clamor of people and rustic furniture, staff members moved around quickly and with purpose, never missing a beat and never bumping into one another. On the worker’s side of the bar stood Bert Weber, co-owner of Common Roots. He was speaking with multiple patrons while holding a glass of their latest IPA currently in its “beta” stage: “Sunset Dreams.”

Along with his son, Christian, Bert owns and operates the brewery that has become a community staple.

As if fate had a part to play, Christian was not able to be present for the interview with Bert, as his wife, Melanie Fronhofer, was giving birth to their second child, Archer Weber.

As Bert speaks about the birth of his second grandchild, his eyes become slightly teary. He takes a pause and looks around the large conference room that we are sitting in. The room, like the rest of the facility at 58 Saratoga Avenue in South Glens Falls, is made up almost entirely of windows. The taproom can be seen to the right, while the brewery is to the left. Throughout the conversation, Bert occasionally stops to smile and nod at passing employees who show genuine appreciation for him as they return the smile.

While the Webers are a family business through and through and treat their employees as extended members, there is no grandiose sense of continuing a “family legacy.” It runs deeper than that - it is about respect for a cultural heritage, which is what Common Roots’ business ethos is based on.

Bert is a first-generation American and was born in the States after his family emigrated here from Southern Bavaria, Germany in 1950.

“The Bavarians had this love affair with beer and they take it very seriously. Beer, I’d say, was always part of all our celebrations. We never brewed beer ourselves, honestly, but that tradition of enjoying beer continued,” he said.

Some say never get into business with your family, but the father-son duo has been able to separate the two, Bert says.

As a father, it’s been an exercise in humility for Bert at times, he says. “Christian kind of became my boss when it came to setting up the brewing system.”

While Bert’s construction experience required Bert to take charge when building the original site in 2015, there came a time when he had to take a backseat and let Christian establish the brewery operation, as Christian is ultimately the expert brewer out of the two.

“Christian has a view from a 10,000-foot level and tends to see the bigger picture and where he wants the company to go. Whereas I would be more concerned with what I’m looking at right now.”

While the family is tied by this cultural heritage, it was never a guarantee that the family business would start.

Bert distinctly remembers the moment he and Christian decided to start the brewery.

“We are bicyclists as a family, we like to enjoy long rides together. On this one trip with my wife, myself, and Christian, we drove all the way down to the Eastern shore of Maryland for the Sea Gull Century bike route. It takes us about nine hours to drive down there. After the ride, when we were headed back up, we had a really heartfelt conversation about the business idea in the car.”

It was a few years before the brewery opened; Bert was retiring as a horticulture teacher. Christian was a graduate student in New Hampshire and had taken on a few apprenticeships.

Chris Ericson (owner of Lake Placid Pub & Brewery) was a big influence on Christian.

“Our heartfelt conversation became quite serious at one point, and to my surprise, my wife replied: ‘Yeah, that’s a great idea. Let’s do it!’”

“Robin and I always loved being part of the community and we looked for ways to stay engaged with it even though I was getting close to retiring.”

Their first real challenge as a family business came right at the beginning.

“We weren’t getting a lot of positive responses from banks,” Bert said. Bert said banks were reticent due to the Weber’s lack of business experience at the time.

They then began meeting with SCORE, a group of retired businessmen, who helped the family get a solid business plan together to present to banks.

Key Bank was the one to eventually give the green light.

When asked what kind of influence being a family business had during this process, Bert said that if anything, it had a positive effect as it pulled on the heartstrings of some.

The Webers have had their fair share of storms. Bert said that this initial challenge was greater than the time when the fire destroyed their original location in 2019 and even greater than the Coronavirus shutdown.

“I get home and an hour later and Christian calls me and says, ‘Dad, the brewery’s on fire.’ Even before the fire was out, we began to get text messages.”

Bert said the outpour of community support made all the difference.

“I’m getting emotional just thinking about it,” he said. It only confirmed Bert’s dream of creating a strong sense of community - a home away from home for their patrons. The support for the Webers only gave them more of an impetus to start the Common Roots Foundation, the nonprofit organization affiliated with the brewery. The foundation is two years old and has raised and donated approximately $50,000 to community organizations that support and exhibit the same ethos as Common Roots.

Their new facility is currently being built next to their main location and is slated to open this June. It will provide more storage room and a new event space which will eventually host weddings.

Bert said that more storage is badly needed, especially for their popular craft, Good Fortune, of which there is an overflowing mountain in their brewery at the moment. Bert says he would hope that his grandchildren may eventually work at the brewery.

“Those first two years there was so much anxiety and questioning whether we made the right decision.”

However, Bert will never forget that tragic night in 2019.

“The night before the fire, we broke ground to do the addition on the old building, and we were thinking, ‘alright, this is really working out.’”

“Oliver’s (Christian’s first son) got a little pair of brewer’s boots. Christian said to me, ‘well dad, Oliver is going to start cleaning kegs and everything else around here as a job. If he likes it, great, if not, there are also nieces.’”

“The opportunity will be here for all the grandchildren, and we’ll see who likes it. This job isn’t for everyone.”