The Hill, a hotspot for college students to go for low-priced food, recently underwent a big change. 

$5 Dollar Pizza, once a popular place for pizza lovers, has been newly reopened as Nick’s Pizza Co. While it is an entirely new business, they still offer some of the original types of pizza that drew customers in. 

According to a Facebook post from owner Nick Bergeron, the reason behind the change was that the business was unable to sustain their low pizza prices. By reopening as Nick’s Pizza, Bergerson said they will have more control on what they would like to do and be able to offer their customers more options than they had as $5 Pizza. 

However, despite keeping some of their more popular options such as the chicken bacon ranch or the macaroni and cheese pizzas, the recipes for the pizzas are undergoing changes to make them “fresher and higher quality,” according to posts by Nick’s Pizza Co. on Facebook.

“We are having sandwiches available to customers, as well as new taco pizza and chicken alfredo pizza, which are quickly becoming the new favorites,” said Bergeron. “We just want to have better ingredients and fresher ingredients, and we will be chopping fresh vegetables every day. We will have better wings now, and something we are going to try to do next week is to sell tacos as well.”

One student who is unsure about the change is Grace Bradseth, a junior majoring in Criminology. 

“If Nick’s Pizza is different than $5 Pizza in terms of how the food tastes, then I can understand the rise in prices. However, I feel that I would probably go to Domino’s Pizza on the Hill since it is cheaper,” Bradseth said. “A lot of college kids don’t have enough money to pay $12 for a pizza, so Domino’s seems like the better option here.”

Another student who had something to say about the change was sophomore criminology major Sami Davis.

“I’m kind of upset that they are raising the prices for pizza at Nick’s Pizza,” David said. “I get that if they’re offering a larger menu to students, then there is a reason to make things more expensive, but many students enjoyed $5 Pizza because it was so cheap.”

Davis stated that she would be interested in trying the new types of pizzas and sandwiches that Nick’s Pizza will be serving.

Bergeron stated that even though the prices at Nick’s Pizza will go up, they will still be lower than competitors by a long shot. 

“We hope it won’t be a drastic change for people; we want to provide them a great value pizza,” Bergeron said. “We are using better ingredients than we did before, so obviously that will cost more to do it that way. We had to justify the cost by making it better, and by making it better, we have to charge more. It goes hand in hand.”

Bergeron said that he did consider the fact that many college students are wary of the price changes.

“I hope students will understand why it costs more, and so hopefully customers will be as continuous as they have been before,” Bergeron said.

Bergeron also mentioned that there will be a grand opening for Nick’s Pizza coming soon. 

“We are figuring out what we need to perfect, what’s working and what’s not working,” Bergeron said. “Once we get the signs up and everything going that we’d like for it, then we will have our grand opening.”