It’s not college without pizza, but could there be too much of a good thing?

In a town already dominated by pizza places, three new by-the-slice pizzerias are opening downtown this semester, testing students’ appetites for the cheesy classic as they compete for customers. Though city Economic Development Coordinator Michael Stiefvater said the three pizza joints aren’t necessarily a reversal of the city’s trend toward different flavors and cuisines, some students and residents disagreed.

“How many pizza places do we need?” said 15-year city resident Bill Coleman. “We’ve got Ledo’s, which is pizza. That’s the one thing the city of College Park really lacks: a place to eat, a decent place to sit down with the family and have a decent meal.”

Pizza is “one of those food items that is synonymous with college,” Stiefvater wrote in an email, but he added that it was “hard to say” whether there is enough demand for pizza downtown for all the new places to survive. Downtown College Park already has five other pizza restaurants — Ratsie’s Pizza, Ledo Restaurant, Domino’s, Papa John’s and Pizza Autentica. Ratsie’s, Stiefvater said, will likely face the most competition because of its location and by-the-slice offerings.

Of the three new options, Slices Pizza Co., which opened Aug. 29 on Route 1 across from the College Park Shopping Center, may offer the widest variety of pizzas, Stiefvater said. Slices offers pizzas by the slice, in flavors such as mac and cheese, buffalo chicken, pesto portobello, veggie lovers and truffled mushroom. It also sells five kinds of salad, pizza-pretzel logs, paninis and desserts such as a cinnamon roll concoction made of pizza dough and Nutella.

“They have a pretty wide menu with unique pizza options — not just pepper and sausage — a little more unique and adventurous pizza,” Stiefvater said. “The owner is from Italy and has a secret recipe and all these things … so [it’s] not your typical jumbo slice or late night drunk pizza.”

In its first two weeks, business has more than exceeded owner Gennaro DiBenedetto’s expectations: On weekends, the shop has sold more than 1,000 slices a day, with lines sometimes leading out the door, he said. Peak times are after midnight on weekends and in the evenings after students get out of classes.

DiBenedetto, who moved to the United States from Italy in 1989, opened his first pizza shop in 1994. His family is in the restaurant business, and he hoped to bring authentic Italian ingredients and recipes to his College Park pizzeria straight from the Italian masters.

Italian pizzas are traditionally whole pies cooked in a wood-fire oven, but in the early 1900s, by-the-slice pizza became popular in Italian immigrants’ restaurants in New York. In College Park, DiBenedetto hopes to offer a fusion of the cultures by combining the fresh, high-quality ingredients of Italian pizzerias with the ease and efficiency of by-the-slice shops.

In Slices on Monday evening, manager Vino DiBenedetto stood right behind the counter, kneading and flipping pizza dough into a flat circle. Other workers removed cooked pies from the large silver oven, a mouthwatering smell of tomatoes and sizzling hot cheese wafting through the restaurant.

Slices chefs make their pizza fresh all day, Gennaro DiBenedetto said.

“We make our own sauce; we make our own dough,” DiBenedetto said. “Our tomatoes are imported from Italy, our olive oil and our mozzarella — the most key ingredients.”

Four students eating at the restaurant on Monday evening said the pizza was better than the city’s other pizza options.

“It’s definitely a lot better than Domino’s and Ratsie’s,” said Meagan Todaro, a senior journalism major, while eating a slice of Roma tomato, which contains fresh garlic, basil, ricotta and feta, along with traditional mozzarella and tomatoes.

“I guess it’s unique, as far as pizza goes,” she said, adding she had also eaten at Slices the night before.

DiBenedetto said he “loves to have a fair price” and won’t charge more if people ask for extra sauce. Some students, however, said the pizza, which costs $3.59 a slice, was too pricey.

“[Prices] were okay. They were kind of high,” said senior English major Harrison Graves, who shared a margherita pizza. “It was good though; it was worth it.”

Despite Slices’ initial business boom, it may soon face new competition with the opening of Terrapin Pizza Mart, down the street from Ratsie’s on Route 1, and Pizza Kingdom, replacing Panda on Lehigh Road.

Terrapin Pizza Mart has another location in Adams Morgan and is known for its jumbo slices, Stiefvater wrote in an email. Signs outside of Pizza Kingdom also advertise jumbo slices — and the three new shops will inevitably ramp up competition for by-the-slice pizza, which Ratsie’s Pizza already offers, he wrote.

“We’ll see if these businesses are correct in assuming there was a void in pizza-type offerings in downtown,” he wrote. “It certainly will be a competitive market.”