Connecticut bar-pie chain Colony Grill is pushing further into Hartford County with two new locations — Newington and South Windsor — both slated to open in 2027. The announcement follows the brand's forthcoming Glastonbury debut and signals an accelerating unit-growth cadence for the Stamford-founded concept.
The New Units
The Newington restaurant, situated at 3260 Berlin Turnpike, will seat more than 175 guests and carry a 12-tap bar, multiple sports-viewing TVs, and a patio. Most notable is the introduction of Colony Grill's first-ever fully private dining room — a dedicated space designed to capture team dinners, corporate outings, and milestone celebrations that the brand says have long defined its guest culture. The South Windsor location at 255 Gateway Blvd will anchor a seat count of approximately 150, also featuring the 12-tap bar, a patio, and a TVs-throughout layout. It will sit within Buckland Gateway, a new mixed-use development combining retail, dining, and community space on the town's eastern commercial corridor.
Growth Context
Founded in 1935, Colony Grill built its identity around a simple bar-pie format — thin-crust pizzas topped with a signature Hot Oil option — served in a community-focused, sports-bar-adjacent atmosphere. The chain currently operates across Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and Florida, a multi-state footprint that reflects a measured but persistent expansion trajectory since the concept moved beyond its original Stamford roots. The dual Hartford County announcement underscores a strategy of geographic clustering: adding Glastonbury, Newington, and South Windsor in close succession allows the brand to build market density, share operational infrastructure, and reinforce brand recognition within a single metro draw area. That playbook mirrors approaches used by regional full-service concepts aiming to grow without stretching supply-chain or staffing resources too thin — a meaningful advantage in today's elevated food and labor cost environment.
Operator Outlook
"These two towns represent exactly what Colony Grill is about," said Paul Coniglio, CEO and co-owner of Colony Grill, pointing to the brand's emphasis on community integration through local organization support and consistent hospitality. The private dining room addition at Newington also represents a modest but strategically significant revenue-diversification move for a concept traditionally built on high-frequency, casual bar traffic. Private dining commands higher per-cover spending, supports group and corporate booking channels, and can smooth weekday daypart performance — areas where neighborhood pizza-and-bar concepts often leave margin on the table. For the foodservice development community, the South Windsor placement inside a new mixed-use project highlights continued operator appetite for ground-floor retail-adjacent sites, where co-tenancy with residential and office uses drives built-in lunch and dinner traffic from day one. Developers targeting experiential dining anchors for such projects have increasingly turned to regional brands with loyal followings rather than national QSR names, and Colony Grill's 90-year Connecticut heritage gives it credibility in that pitch.
For more on regional full-service expansion trends, see our coverage of franchise development deal structures and unit-growth strategies in the casual dining segment.
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.
