The Expansion Move
Colony Grill, the Stamford-founded bar-pie concept built around its Famous Thin-Crust Hot Oil pizza, has announced two new Connecticut locations — Newington and South Windsor — both slated to open in 2027. The announcement follows the brand's pending Glastonbury opening and reflects a deliberate push deeper into Hartford County, a market where regional loyalty and community sports culture align closely with Colony's positioning.
The Newington unit at 3260 Berlin Turnpike will seat more than 175 guests and introduces the brand's first fully private dining room — a meaningful format shift for a concept historically built around open bar-and-booth environments. The South Windsor location at 255 Gateway Blvd will anchor the Buckland Gateway mixed-use development, seating approximately 150 guests with patio access and Colony's signature 12-tap bar.
What the Format Signals
The private dining room addition in Newington is worth noting beyond the headline. For operators watching how legacy bar-pizza brands adapt their revenue mix, a dedicated private space targets corporate outings, milestone events, and team dinners — occasions that command higher per-head spend and generate advance reservations. It's a relatively low-cost format addition that can materially improve midweek utilization without altering the core menu or service model.
The South Windsor placement inside Buckland Gateway — a mixed-use development combining retail, dining, and community space — reflects a broader site-selection trend among regional chains: anchoring in planned developments where foot-traffic is engineered by the developer rather than earned over years of street-level visibility. For a brand with a loyal following but a still-regional footprint, this kind of landlord partnership de-risks the lease and delivers a built-in audience of residents, office workers, and retail visitors.
Intelligence for Operators and Vendors
Colony Grill's Hartford County concentration also carries a message for suppliers and vendors tracking regional chain growth. With multiple units opening in a compressed geographic window — Glastonbury, then Newington and South Windsor — procurement, equipment, and staffing vendors should expect consolidated buying conversations rather than location-by-location decisions. Brands executing cluster-market strategies typically negotiate volume terms across the opening pipeline, not per unit.
For operators benchmarking their own expansion models, Colony's approach — simple menu, community sports integration, mixed-use real estate, and selective format upgrades — offers a replicable template that doesn't require national scale to execute. Founded in 1935, the brand has maintained menu discipline across Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and Florida locations, a constraint that keeps training costs manageable and brand consistency high as the unit count grows.
See how other regional brands are structuring multi-unit launch packages and retail readiness plays or review the operator intelligence on mixed-use restaurant placement trends for broader context on where site-selection strategies are heading.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
