Hello Kitty is taking over another corner of the Las Vegas Strip. Sanrio's third permanent Hello Kitty Cafe on the Strip opens Friday on the second floor of The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, filling a 3,400-square-foot space that makes it the largest Hello Kitty venue in Las Vegas history. Inside, the cafe hides a reservation-only tea room called the Bow Room tucked behind its main dining area, alongside a menu of character-shaped taiyaki and an expanded pastry program.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the new cafe includes both a casual dining room and the secluded Bow Room, where guests can book a prix-fixe tea service for $95 per person that includes sweet and savory dishes and a pot of tea. Outside the Bow Room, diners can order à la carte savory dishes and specialty beverages at additional cost. The dual-room format is not new to Sanrio: the concept, and the Bow Room name itself, trace back to the original Hello Kitty Grand Cafe that debuted at Irvine Spectrum Center in Irvine, California, in September 2018, according to Sanrio.
What's on the Menu
Per the Review-Journal's report, the pastry case is led by an in-house pastry chef turning out fresh daily taiyaki filled with chocolate, custard, strawberry, and ube, alongside face cookies, macarons, strawberry shortcake, birthday cake, and cupcakes in chocolate, red velvet, and ube. Sweet-toothed visitors can also find the Cinnamoroll cream cheese blueberry bread, the My Melody strawberry shortcake, and the Keroppi matcha cream puff, plus Hello Kitty doughnuts and waffle cones swirled with matcha strawberry or chocolate vanilla.
Drinks lean just as elaborate. The cafe's specialty beverage menu includes a banana split cold brew, cookie butter latte, banana matcha, pistachio matcha, and strawberry matcha, on top of standard espresso, cold brews, matcha, lemonades, teas, slushes, hot chocolate, and chocolate milk, the outlet's report notes. Shoppers who want to take a piece of the cafe home can pick from branded merchandise including crossbody bags, tote bags, jackets, hoodies, shirts, hats, plushies, tumblers, and mugs.
Opening Weekend and Hours
The cafe opens at 11 a.m. on opening Friday, with giveaways and Hello Kitty meet-and-greets planned throughout the weekend, the same report states. Regular hours will run 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, while the Bow Room keeps its own schedule of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily with final reservations accepted at 4:45 p.m. and a separate booking required to get a seat there.
Las Vegas fans have shown up in force for past Hello Kitty debuts in the city. More than 500 people lined up for the July 2022 opening of the Hello Kitty Cafe at Fashion Show mall, with some campers arriving as early as 11:52 p.m. the night before, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. That Fashion Show location followed an earlier Hello Kitty Cafe at The Park, between New York-New York and Park MGM, which debuted in July 2019, making the new Forum Shops flagship the third permanent Hello Kitty cafe to open on the Strip.
From Food Truck to Strip Flagship
From Food Truck to Strip Flagship The dining concept has a scrappy origin story. Sanrio's permanent U.S. cafe venture traces back to licensees Urania and Charles Chien along with restaurateur Allan Tea, who first launched Hello Kitty food as a mobile truck at the inaugural Hello Kitty Con in October 2014, as detailed by kevinEats. Two Hello Kitty Cafe Trucks have traveled across the United States since 2014, per Attractions Magazine, and those trucks still roll through markets today alongside the permanent cafes, including recent stops covered in Hoodline's report on a Hello Kitty Cafe Truck visit to Sacramento's Arden Fair Mall and its earlier Texas tour through Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso.
Before the brand invested in expansive indoor cafes, Sanrio tested a Hello Kitty Cafe pop-up built from a metal shipping container at Irvine Spectrum Center in July 2016, a stepping stone between the food trucks and permanent dining rooms, kevinEats reports. The Las Vegas Strip has felt that evolution directly, with the Hello Kitty truck itself visiting the city several times over the past decade before permanent cafes followed.
A Retail Giant's Vegas Bet
A Retail Giant's Vegas Bet The cafe's arrival comes as Sanrio, the Japanese company behind the Hello Kitty brand, rides a wave of financial momentum. Sanrio posted a record annual operating profit of roughly $336 million for its fiscal year ending March 2025, a 92% jump driven by global character licensing, according to JAKOTA News. Sanrio's licensing business extends worldwide.
The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, where the new cafe is set to open, spans 675,000 square feet and houses roughly 160 specialty retailers and restaurants connected directly to the Caesars Palace resort. The mall added a 2,300-square-foot Giorgio Armani boutique and a relocated Tory Burch store in 2026, while a Pop Mart blind-box shop is an upcoming arrival, reflecting a broader push toward experiential and pop-culture-driven retail.
Hello Kitty's Global Reach
Hello Kitty, instantly recognizable by her bow, two black button eyes, yellow button nose, and famously missing mouth, first debuted in Japan in 1975 as a vinyl coin purse. Half a century later, the character remains a global pop culture icon, and Sanrio owns the brand outright. Nevada regulations also shape how the new cafe operates day to day: food service and kitchen staff at Las Vegas dining venues must hold a valid Nevada Food Handler Safety Training Card to legally handle the fresh daily pastries, taiyaki, and specialty beverages the cafe is built around.
The Forum Shops opening follows Sanrio's continued push into brick-and-mortar dining well beyond the Strip. Hoodline has previously reported on Sanrio's plans for Skokie's Old Orchard mall and a separate cafe headed for Chicago's Magnificent Mile, part of the same nationwide expansion from food trucks into permanent, high-margin cafes that now includes the Las Vegas Strip's biggest Hello Kitty venue yet.
