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BRISTOL — After a few months of sitting empty after housing a comedy club and a culinary school, the old Bristol Post Office on Piedmont Avenue is now the home of Old Post 33 Venue and Speakeasy.

Honey Rodgers, a native Texan who moved to Bristol three years ago, recalled how back in January, after spending most of the pandemic pondering her next business venture and some time in Blackbird Bakery, she happened to peek into the old Bristol Post Office across the street and immediately knew it was the perfect location for a wedding venue.

“For two years, I kind of just sat. What do I want to do? What does this community need? You know, what can I bring to the community? Because I’m just an entrepreneurial spirit, anyways, I just happened to be at Blackbird Bakery and saw this building and was so curious about it,” Rodgers said. “I mean, as cheesy as it sounds. It really is like the building found me. I wasn’t really looking for it, but I always wanted to have a wedding venue, so this just made sense to me when I looked at this building. I thought this needs to be a wedding venue. Nothing else really makes sense.”

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Post 33 Venue and Speakeasy is split into three sections. The central hall will serve as the main wedding and event space, with Boutique 33 planned to be set up near the entrance of the building and in the basement a speakeasy.

The speakeasy was not in Rodgers’s original business plan until she discovered that an entire bar, which was originally the old train station bar, was installed downstairs. Of course, her husband immediately proposed turning the space into a sports bar, an idea she quickly shot down.

“I was surprised about this being down here. I didn’t expect that, and I had no intentions of being a bar owner,” Rodgers said. “My husband, of course, being a man, said, ‘Let’s do a sports bar.’ No, we’re not doing a sports bar because, like, that doesn’t work. And so what is different that no one else is doing? Because I didn’t want to compete directly with anybody else’s business. What is something that could be added to this, you know, for downtown and to this area, that would be an asset, not just another thing? And so I thought this really makes sense as a speakeasy.”

Currently, Rodgers is waiting on a liquor license to be approved. The license has been delayed a couple of times and is the last of the red tape needed to get through before the speakeasy opens to the public, ideally by Halloween weekend.

“I should have that next week. I’ve been saying that for three weeks. So that’s been my biggest challenge, the red tape with the license,” Rodgers said. “Other than that, it’s really just been a lot of work, but nothing’s really been hung up. It’s just time investment and trying to get everything in place.”

The Old Post 33 will have its own in-house wedding planner and coordinator, as well as a chef from Johnson City, Tennessee with whom Rogers is currently in negotiations to take over the kitchen. The chef will also provide catering for weddings, brunch, and lunch Monday through Friday, as well as sushi for the speakeasy.

Activity quickly picks up for Rodgers and Old Post 33 in December, with the wedding venue set to host its first round of monthly 90-minute pop-up weddings, as well as a planned Bristol Grinchmas event for kids upstairs and for adults in the speakeasy.

“Believe in Bristol is having a private event downstairs on the 28th of October. We’re having a Halloween party upstairs on Saturday, the 29th, and then we’re having pop-up weddings, which is essentially five micro weddings in one day, so that will be fun,” Rodgers said. “In December, we’re doing a spinoff of Whoville, which is called Bristolville Grinchmas, and we’ve got a couple of theatre college kids coming in to play those roles, and we’re gonna have a kids program upstairs, and then downstairs we’ll have a mean Grinch in the speakeasy.”

Rodgers has been surprised by the reception from the other downtown business owners.

“Everybody in this community has been really great. I mean, I’ve lived in different states. I’ve had different businesses, and I’ve never really had this kind of cohesion,” Rodgers said. “They have been really fantastic at embracing me and embracing the concept of this new business and just having a lot of the interaction and having people just step up and say, how can I help you? It’s been pretty great.”

The Old Post 33 venue is open and accepting event reservations. Once the liquor license is approved for the speakeasy, it will be open weekdays from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. and weekends from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m.

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