A Gaming Executive, a Barista Champion, and a Designer Walk Into Fremont East
Kimo Akiona moved to Las Vegas from Hawaii and spent years in the gaming industry before deciding he wanted to build something outside the casino world. Cole McBride was a competitive barista — he won the 2016 US Barista Championships Western Conference title and had been pushing specialty coffee culture in a city that largely ran on casino drip pots and drive-through chains. Travis Landice handled space design and operations. The three of them opened PublicUs in 2015 on Fremont Street, in the Fremont East corridor that was just beginning to attract independent businesses between the established casino properties and the arts-driven developments further east.
The name PublicUs translates from Greek as “for the people,” and it defined the concept: a specialty coffee bar, artisan bakery, and full-service restaurant built for the neighborhood rather than for tourists. McBride’s coffee program brought serious specialty roasting and preparation methods to a part of the city that had never had them. The food menu expanded beyond typical café fare into a full breakfast-and-lunch operation with baked goods produced in-house daily. Sprudge — the most widely read specialty coffee publication in the world — profiled PublicUs and called it potentially “America’s Best New Cafe,” a distinction that put a Fremont Street coffee shop on the national specialty map.
Specialty Coffee in a Casino Town
PublicUs arrived in Las Vegas at a time when the city’s specialty coffee scene was nearly nonexistent. The resort corridor served volume coffee to millions of visitors, but serious single-origin roasting and manual brewing methods were almost impossible to find. McBride’s competition credentials gave PublicUs credibility with the national specialty coffee community from day one, and the shop became a gathering point for baristas, roasters, and coffee professionals visiting Las Vegas. PublicUs demonstrated that Las Vegas could support the same caliber of specialty coffee found in Portland, San Francisco, or Brooklyn.
PublicUs in the Las Vegas Valley
The Fremont East District has undergone one of the most significant commercial transformations in downtown Las Vegas over the past decade. PublicUs was among the first non-bar, non-casino businesses to anchor the corridor at 1126 Fremont Street, and its presence helped signal that the neighborhood could sustain daytime foot traffic driven by food and coffee rather than nightlife alone. For residents of the downtown Las Vegas neighborhoods — from the Huntridge to the John S. Park historic district — PublicUs became the default morning destination: the place where the neighborhood starts its day before the casinos turn on their lights.
- Owners
- Kimo Akiona, Cole McBride, Travis Landice
- Founded
- 2015
- Address
- 1126 Fremont St, Las Vegas, NV 89101
- Phone
- (702) 331-5500
- Website
- publicuslv.com