Students tired of pizza can enjoy a new snack this week when a soft pretzel bakery opens on Allen Street.

Sam and Chris Rocco, brothers who grew up in Lewistown, decided to open a pretzel bakery business, said Sam Rocco, co-owner of Totally Twisted.

"You know if you're from Philly [soft pretzels] are a staple," he said.

Totally Twisted is a bakery more than a store, he added.

"We're not at all like an Auntie Anne's," he said.

Totally Twisted will be baking about 2,500 pretzels per day, he said. The five-tier rotating oven can bake 300 pretzels at once, and each batch takes 10 to 12 minutes to make, he said.

The bakery will have traditional soft, gourmet and variations of the twisted pretzel. These include pretzel pockets stuffed with ham and cheese or pepperoni pizza, hotdogs covered in cheese baked in a pretzel shell, cinnamon sugar pretzels, pecan chrome pretzels, sour cream and onion pretzels, pretzel sticks and pretzel nuggets, Sam Rocco said.

"We don't want to overdo it," he added. The main pieces of equipment in the bakery are the oven, the conveyer belt for hand twisting pretzels and the mixer. The mixer, made in 1944, was used on a U.S. Navy ship in World War II.

The Roccos decided to open Totally Twisted in State College to appeal to the student market and be a part of a fun community close to where they grew up, Sam said.

Chris Deats (junior-electrical engineering) said he is looking forward to another alternative to bars for food and drinks. Sam Rocco said he wanted to open on College Avenue, but when he could not find a location big enough for his establishment, he decided it was more important to open quickly than to wait for a location closer to campus.

He is not the only one concerned about the location. "I don't know how well [Totally Twisted] will do at this end of town," said Lacey Coleman (sophomore-agricultural business management).

In addition, Schlow Memorial Library might be expanding into the building where Totally Twisted is developing, limiting the Roccos to a one-year lease, Sam Rocco said. "I walk past [Totally Twisted] every day and I never noticed it," Deats said.

Sam Rocco said he is rushing to establish his shop before his short-term lease runs out to gain recognition in the community.