Greg and Brad Finefrock founded Finney’s Crafthouse in 2016. The name came from a high school nickname, the Finney Brothers, a play on their last name. The first location worked. Then the next. By the time they had sixteen restaurants across Central and Southern California, the obvious question was where to expand beyond their home state.
They spent years researching. They evaluated multiple markets across multiple states. (cite index=”175-1″>They landed on Las Vegas. “For the past few years, we have been researching different markets in many states that we felt were ripe for a Finney’s. We determined that Las Vegas would be at the top of our list,” the brothers said in a statement. “We will be starting construction in February and hope to be open later this year.”
(cite index=”174-1″>Finney’s Crafthouse opened its first restaurant beyond California on September 21 at Downtown Summerlin, in The Dining Arroyo at 10955 Oval Park Drive, marking the company’s 17th restaurant and the first of two planned Southern Nevada locations. A second Finney’s is expected to open later in 2026 at Town Square.
The space it occupies has a short but notable history. (cite index=”173-1″>Finney’s replaced Wolfgang Puck Players Locker, which closed in July 2023. Puck’s restaurant group had planned to transform the shuttered spot into an off-Strip version of his longtime Italian restaurant Lupo, but the proposed replacement never materialized. Securing a space that a Wolfgang Puck concept couldn’t make work, and opening there successfully, would itself be a meaningful statement about neighborhood dining viability in Summerlin.
The Neighborhood Tavern as Strategic Category
Finney’s positions itself specifically as a neighborhood tavern rather than a sports bar, a craft beer hall, or any of the other category labels that get applied to restaurants combining American comfort food, televised sports, and tap beer programs. The distinction matters for understanding what the concept is actually trying to deliver.
A sports bar optimizes for game viewing and usually subordinates food quality to alcohol revenue. A craft beer hall centers the beverage program and typically offers food as a supporting act. A neighborhood tavern, at least in the Finney’s interpretation, treats food, beer, and sports viewing as equally important parts of a single social experience rather than ordering them hierarchically.
(cite index=”175-1″>The Downtown Summerlin location brings more than 50 made-from-scratch menu items, 30 rotating craft beers on tap, handcrafted cocktails, and 20 HDTVs to a 245-seat space just steps from Las Vegas Ballpark, home of the Triple-A Las Vegas Aviators.
Fifty scratch-made dishes is a significant culinary commitment for a concept operating in this category. The specific menu items the Finefrock brothers chose for Las Vegas reveal genuine culinary thinking rather than generic American comfort food: (cite index=”172-1″>a Japanese wagyu burger, Norwegian salmon sandwich, Southwest chicken bowl, oval pizzas, ahi poke bowl, blackened shrimp tacos, smoked tri-tip sandwich, Moroccan salad, and bison burger.
Japanese wagyu in a burger at a neighborhood tavern isn’t a casual decision. It signals that Finney’s is serious about ingredient quality rather than treating premium beef as a marketing claim. The Norwegian salmon sandwich, the Moroccan salad, and the ahi poke bowl reflect a menu with genuine range that serves different dietary preferences and flavor interests without feeling like it’s trying to be all things to all people. These are specific choices that reflect what the brothers believe their audience actually wants.
The Wolfgang Puck Space and Its Story
The space Finney’s occupies at 10955 Oval Park Drive has an awkward prior chapter that the restaurant community noticed. Wolfgang Puck Players Locker closed in July 2023 after operating steps from Las Vegas Ballpark, serving the sports-adjacent demographic that the location’s proximity to the Triple-A stadium suggests. The subsequent plan to convert it to a Lupo Italian concept never materialized, leaving the space empty while Downtown Summerlin continued developing around it.
Finney’s selecting this specific address, with its unsuccessful prior tenant, reflects confidence that the concept mismatch rather than the location caused the Players Locker’s struggles. The Finefrock brothers are betting that their neighborhood tavern format, built specifically around sports viewing and scratch-made American food with craft beer, fits the Las Vegas Ballpark adjacency better than a celebrity chef concept that wasn’t designed with that adjacency in mind.
The Las Vegas Ballpark generates specific traffic patterns that restaurants in its footprint should be designed around rather than ignoring. Game days create pre-game lunch rushes and post-game dinner crowds. Off-season periods require a concept that sustains on neighborhood regulars rather than depending on event traffic. Finney’s all-day format and neighborhood-tavern identity, designed for both sports occasion dining and regular weeknight visits, is better suited to these patterns than a fine dining Italian concept would have been.
Downtown Summerlin as the Right First Market
Of the markets the Finefrock brothers evaluated outside California, Las Vegas’s specific demographic composition for their concept is worth examining. Summerlin’s affluent residential community skews toward families, professionals, and sports fans with the kind of disposable income that supports above-average spending on neighborhood restaurants. The Golden Knights, Raiders, and Aviators all have passionate local followings that generate sports-viewing demand year-round. And the craft beer culture that has developed in Las Vegas over the past decade provides the audience appreciation for a 30-tap rotating program that less beer-sophisticated markets might not deliver.
The Golden Knights and Raiders factor is particularly relevant. Finney’s timing the Downtown Summerlin opening for September 21, as the NHL preseason begins and the NFL regular season enters its second week, is not accidental. (cite index=”176-1″>The 20 HDTVs positioned across the dining room, bar, and patio ensure guests never miss a play, which is the specific value proposition that converts sports-watching occasions into regular restaurant visits rather than home viewing.
Downtown Summerlin’s broader development as a retail and entertainment destination provides foot traffic that purely residential strip mall locations don’t generate. The complex houses multiple dining options, entertainment venues, and retail anchors that draw visitors specifically to the address rather than requiring Finney’s to generate its own standalone traffic.
The Second Location Signal
The announced second Finney’s at Town Square in Las Vegas, expected later in 2026, signals that the Finefrock brothers aren’t treating Las Vegas as a single-location test market. Two locations committed simultaneously reflects confidence in the market that a more cautious single-location-first approach wouldn’t demonstrate.
Town Square differs from Downtown Summerlin in ways that will test how Finney’s adapts to different Las Vegas market segments. Town Square, located on Las Vegas Boulevard near the south end of the Strip, draws a mix of Strip-adjacent tourists and local families. The demographic differs from Summerlin’s affluent residential base, which means the second location will reveal whether Finney’s concept is specific enough to anchor different community contexts or whether it succeeds specifically in the upscale residential environment that Downtown Summerlin represents.
Two Las Vegas locations from a California operator that spent years researching the market before committing reflects the kind of measured, research-driven expansion that doesn’t generate much media attention but tends to produce better long-term outcomes than impulsive market entries.
Notes and Key Takeaways
For Restaurant Operators:
Finney’s Crafthouse’s multi-year market research before committing to Las Vegas, followed by simultaneous two-location entry, demonstrates an expansion methodology that prioritizes fit over speed. The decision to replace a failed Wolfgang Puck concept in a Las Vegas Ballpark-adjacent space reflects confidence that format fit, not location quality, determines success in this specific address.
For Diners:
Finney’s Downtown Summerlin opened September 21 at 10955 Oval Park Drive, bringing 50-plus scratch-made dishes including Japanese wagyu burgers and Norwegian salmon sandwiches, 30 rotating craft beers, and 20 HDTVs to a 245-seat space steps from Las Vegas Ballpark. The first 200 guests on opening day received complimentary Finney’s hats. A second Las Vegas location at Town Square is planned for later in 2026.
For Las Vegas:
The Finefrock brothers’ decision to break out of California specifically into Las Vegas, after years of market research, validates what the suburban Las Vegas dining community has been arguing for years: the valley’s residential neighborhoods are serious restaurant markets that warrant investment from established regional concepts rather than being treated as secondary considerations after Strip and casino-adjacent positioning.
Important Insights:
The scratch-made commitment across fifty dishes is the quality differentiator that separates Finney’s from the sports bar category it superficially resembles. A concept that makes its own food across a menu of this breadth is making a fundamentally different proposition than one that prioritizes speed and cost efficiency. Sustaining this commitment across seventeen California locations suggests operational discipline that translates to Las Vegas.
The Japanese wagyu burger on a neighborhood tavern menu in 2026 is a specific cultural moment. Wagyu has moved from premium steakhouse novelty to ingredient that neighborhood restaurants can incorporate without the elevated price points that tasting menu contexts require. Finney’s putting wagyu in a burger signals awareness of this shift and willingness to use premium ingredients where they make genuine culinary sense.
Dog-friendly patio policies, specifically mentioned in Finney’s positioning, reflect sophisticated understanding of what drives repeat neighborhood restaurant visitation in suburban Las Vegas. Dog owners who can bring their pets to outdoor dining are more likely to make a restaurant part of regular routines than to treat it as an occasional destination.
The Las Vegas Aviators Triple-A baseball proximity creates a specific game-day occasion that differs from the NFL and NHL events most Las Vegas restaurants compete around. Triple-A baseball draws a different demographic than the major sports properties, typically more family-oriented and price-conscious, which provides Finney’s with weekday game-night occasions that complement the weekend sports watching culture the restaurant is also designed to serve.
Greg and Brad Finefrock’s identical-surname branding, leaning into a high school nickname that became the restaurant’s name, creates authentic founder narrative that corporate restaurant groups cannot manufacture. The origin story, two brothers named Finefrock who got called the Finney Brothers, is specific enough to be genuinely personal rather than marketing-constructed, which matters for building community connection in new markets.
