A new coffee counter at 710 W. Lake Mead Blvd. in North Las Vegas is serving up more than espresso and lemonade — it's dishing out real-world job training to hospitality students hoping to land work on the Strip. The 710 Coffee Bar, run by students at the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, is now open to the public, giving trainees hands-on practice in daily business operations, specialty coffee preparation, and guest service, according to the Las Vegas Sun.
The coffee bar officially launched with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 10, hosted by Culinary Academy of Las Vegas CEO Bobbi Damrow alongside Culinary Union Local 226 President Ted Pappageorge, Bartenders Union Local 165 Secretary-Treasurer Terry Greenwald, and North Las Vegas Mayor Pamela Goynes-Brown, according to Culinary Workers Union Local 226. The shop takes its name from CALV's street address and is open to the public weekdays from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., serving handcrafted espresso drinks, flavored lemonades, pastries, and breakfast items.
A Two-Week Crash Course Behind the Counter
The coffee bar doubles as the applied learning venue for CALV's 60-hour, two-week Fountain Worker program, where students get hands-on instruction in point-of-sale operations, cash handling, customer service, food safety, and quick-service workflow, according to the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas. It's a compressed but structured curriculum designed to move trainees from classroom to counter quickly, with real customers and real transactions standing in for simulated exercises.
The payoff for finishing the program extends well beyond a completion certificate. Employers on the Las Vegas Strip and Downtown recognize CALV's food and beverage certificates as equivalent to one year of industry job experience, according to the academy, a distinction that can fast-track graduates into hospitality jobs that might otherwise require a longer resume.
A Union-Backed Model Dating to 1993
The coffee bar's mission traces back to CALV's founding structure. Established in 1993, the academy operates as a nonprofit labor-management trust formed through a partnership between Culinary Workers Union Local 226, Bartenders Union Local 165, and more than 50 participating resort properties across Southern Nevada. Hospitality workers already employed at participating union properties can attend CALV training classes at no personal cost through negotiated union benefit packages, per Local 226, opening a path for current employees to upskill into new roles like barista work without added financial strain.
710 Coffee Bar isn't CALV's only public-facing classroom. The academy also runs Westside Bistro, a full-service restaurant on its North Las Vegas campus, and 500 Grand Cafe inside the Clark County Government Center, giving students multiple real-world settings to practice their trade. Every dollar customers spend at these enterprises, including 710 Coffee Bar and Westside Bistro, gets reinvested into the CALV Scholarship Fund to subsidize tuition for low-income and displaced workers, according to the academy's Westside Bistro program page.
Small Classes, State Oversight
All of CALV's vocational courses are licensed by the Nevada Commission on Post-Secondary Education and capped at no more than 15 students per class, ensuring direct mentorship from experienced industry instructors, according to GuideStar. That structure matters in a state where hospitality remains a dominant employer: Nevada recorded the nation's highest unemployment rate at 5.2% in early 2023, a trend that underscored the role of CALV's 12 to 15 state-licensed training tracks in placing local residents into stable, living-wage hospitality jobs, according to Las Vegas Weekly.
The new coffee bar arrives not long after CALV expanded its physical footprint. Hoodline reported on the campus's growth from 40,000 to 55,000 square feet, a project that added training kitchens, learning labs, and student-operated venues to boost the academy's annual training capacity. The 710 Coffee Bar now stands as the newest piece of that expanded network, giving North Las Vegas residents another reason to stop in for a cup of coffee that also happens to be someone's first step toward a Strip career.
