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December 16, 2024

Bear’s Smokehouse opens new UConn location

Photo | Flickr/Martin Bartholmy Bear's Smokehouse BBQ on Front St in Hartford.
By Harriet Jones

Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ has announced it will open a new location in the UConn Student Union’s food court at the university’s Storrs campus.

Bear’s will take over a space in the union that’s currently occupied by One Plate, Two Plates. The restaurant chain says it intends to have the location renovated and operating by early in the spring 2025 semester.

The company has signed a five-year lease with the UConn Board of Trustees.

Connecticut-based Bear’s is co-owned by Jamie McDonald and Cheryl Antoncic. It opened its first location in Windsor in 2013, and has since expanded to four restaurants in Connecticut and two in North Carolina.

The Connecticut restaurants include Front Street in Hartford, which is popular with students at the adjacent UConn Hartford campus.

Bear’s also has a satellite location at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, and bills itself as “the official BBQ of the UConn Huskies.”

“Our partnership with the University of Connecticut and UConn Athletics started in 2015 and has continued to evolve over the last nine years,’ says Antoncic. ‘We are very excited for our new location in the Student Union, allowing us to integrate further into the UConn community with students and staff on a daily basis.”

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