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The Blue Cobalt restaurant at the Bethlehem Sands Casino Resort
Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem will offer good eating around the clock when it opens on May 22, 2009. A local restaurant owner, Kostas Kalogeropolous, plans to open a 24-hour buffet restaurant in the casino called The Blue Cobalt. The restaurant will feature lunch and dinner buffets and serve a la carte items all day long. A casino buffet featuring trays of pasta in tomato and cream sauces, carving stations for chicken, beef or ham and the dessert cart will cost you about $25. Cobalt Cafe will employ approximately 140 people in jobs ranging from chefs and kitchen staff to waiters and baristas.
Kalogeropolous also operates Shula’s Steakhouse in the Promenade Shops in Upper Saucon Township. The buffet at the Blue Cobalt is expected to seat 250 people when it opens, but Kalogeropolous says he hopes to expand. He expects a steady flow of customers despite an economy that has restaurants struggling for fewer and fewer disposable dollars. Kalogeropolous sited estimates of 14,000 people a day at the Sands and he’d do well if only 6 percent to 7 percent of that number dine at his cafe.
Kalogeropoulos is a philanthropist with 40 years in the hospitality business. He is the senior executive vice president of Meyer Jabara Hotels, a holding company that includes the Holiday Inn Conference Center, Fogelsville. He also is a partner in the project to build a Hyatt hotel in downtown Bethlehem. Kalogeropoulos has done charity work including “Dream Come True” which he launched in 1984 to fulfill the dreams of terminally ill children, whether it’s a trip to Disney World or a visit from a celebrity.
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