Calios the Calzone King will move into Collegetown on Aug. 8, according to Ithaca owner Eric Sears. The store will be located at 408 College Avenue, formerly the site of Tea Time Hibachi.
“At this location, we’re hoping to have a big lunch crowd and a lot of foot traffic,” Sears said, referencing the restaurant’s proximity to campus.
Calios currently operates nine stores in Pennsylvania and upstate New York with a menu of over 60 different types of calzones, according to its website. Sears said that popular menu items include the chicken bacon and buffalo calzones, as well as the restaurant’s selection of dessert calzones.
Courtesy of Eric Sears
Ithaca owner Eric Sears said he hopes Calios’s “wide variety” of calzones will appeal to students.
“[Our] dessert calzones — apple, cheesecake, cookies and cream — those are pretty popular as well,” Sears said. “It depends on whether you want something sweet or something to fill you up. There’s a wide variety.”
As a chain, Calios focuses mainly on colleges, according to Sears. As a Cortland native, he said he thought Ithaca was the perfect place to open another Calios store.
“I was driving by and I saw that the place was for rent, and … things just went from there,” he said. “I really enjoy being in Ithaca, so I’m looking forward to [having a store] here.”
June Xia ’18, who has seen the store’s preparations for its August opening, said she considers Calios’s menu offerings different from anything else offered around campus.
“I love how many options they have, and I feel like they’ll definitely be able to offer something that you can’t really find in Collegetown at the moment,” Xia said. “The only good calzone place that I know of on campus is at Nasties, which was really far from where I lived this year, so I only got a chance to go once. Having a calzone place in Collegetown will be so much more convenient for so many people.”
Erick Vargas ’18 said he believes students will also be drawn to Calios because of its accessible location.
“[It’s] very convenient,” Vargas said. “It’s right in front of the bus stop.”
Xia added that she was happy to see Collegetown’s empty spaces filling up quickly.
“I’m glad someone [rented] that space and is doing something with it; I don’t like seeing an empty space in Collegetown all boarded up,” Xia said. “Hopefully Calios can stick around for the long run.”