Vegas Born Bar & Grill opens inside Reid airport

The Golden Knights are hoping to grow the team’s brand presence through its new themed restaurant located inside Harry Reid International Airport.

Vegas Born Bar & Grill opened last month in the D Gates of the airport, offering patrons dining and drinking options with a Knights motif. Decked out in black and gold accents, Knights memorabilia displayed throughout and a hockey rink-style design along the walls, the restaurant oozes all things hockey in the desert.

With 57.6 million people passing through the airport last year, and 2024 on pace to surpass that, adding the Knights’ branding to the facility was a no-brainer for the team, according to Eric Tosi, vice president of marketing for the Golden Knights.

“Bill Foley made the ‘cup-in-six’ prediction, which everybody thought was eyebrow raising, but one of the other aspirational goals was that he wanted the Golden Knights brand to be as recognizable to people around the world as the New York Yankees and the L.A. Lakers,” Tosi said during a Wednesday grand opening ceremony. “For us, from a marketing perspective, we’re always looking for ways to engage and expand the visibility of our brand. What better place to do that than here at Harry Reid, one of the most highly trafficked airports in the country?”

Honing the brand

Aside from the visuals representing the Knights throughout the space, the menu features hockey-, Las Vegas- and team-themed items.

From The Wingers, jumbo chicken wings available in a variety of flavors based on the hockey player position, to the Misfits’ Swiss Burger, a take on a Swiss burger with a name based on the original Golden Knights players’ misfits moniker, and the Viva Las Veggie Omelet, a three-egg omelet with play on the Viva Las Vegas tagline, the team, along with airport food and beverage concessionaire HMSHost, had fun with developing all aspects of the restaurant.

“It’s intended to be an immersive experience — the menu items as well,” Tosi said. “Just all of the theming, the to-go portion we named ‘Breakaway’ and then throughout the rest of the menu, guests are going to really experience what it really means to be a Golden Knight fan.”

With the Raiders already having a footprint within the airport with its Raider Image retail spaces, adding the Knights to the mix was something that Clark County director of aviation Rosemary Vassiliadis thought would be a hit among travelers.

Two years in the making

“What we’ve learned is that professional sports bring a lot of people that travel through the airport,” Vassiliadis said Wednesday. “People fly in to see the game, and to have our very own and first hometown team investing in a place at the airport where they can sit down, get something to eat, buy merchandise and learn a little bit about the owner and the family is really exciting to us.”

The restaurant concept has been more than two years in the making, from the initial idea to planning and the construction phase.

“It’s been a bit of a process,” Tosi said. “There were some construction moratoriums with some of the big events coming through here, with Formula One and the Super Bowl, as far as approvals and everything else. But we wanted to target it for the launch of a season. We thought the timing was perfect here to have this ready to go this summer, in preparation for the hockey season in the fall.”

Vegas Born has been one of the Knights’ main mantras used since the team’s inception, including on various pieces of merchandise and is featured on the team’s specialty Nevada license plate. Although the team will explore other uses for the branding, expanding the restaurant side isn’t yet included in those plans.

“As far as restaurants go, this is the only one that is currently planned,” Tosi said.

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.