Wedding DJ at Black Mountain Chocolate in Winston-Salem, NC

The Space

Black Mountain Chocolate occupies part of the Bailey Power Plant South building in downtown Winston-Salem’s Innovation Quarter, a structure built in 1947 to house turbines that powered the R.J. Reynolds tobacco factories nearby. STITCH Design Shop handled the redesign, working warm wood and sleek metal into the interior as a nod to Appalachian craftsmanship, with accent colors of orange, plum, and blue set against the building’s industrial bones.

The chocolate bar itself traces back to 2007 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, moved into the Innovation Quarter’s Trade Street location, a former tobacco warehouse, in 2014, then relocated again to this Bailey South address in 2020. A working chocolate factory sits behind glass windows here, so guests can watch beans become bars while the room around them runs as a lounge, retail counter, and full bar.

Capacity & Layout

The lounge holds 75 guests seated indoors, with additional outdoor seating extending that beyond the walls when weather allows. For a couple weighing this room against a hotel ballroom, 75 indoor seats sets the ceiling on a formal seated dinner, and it puts this venue in the range of an intimate reception rather than a large one, with the retail counter and factory windows still part of the walkable footprint guests move through.

Private events run at a smaller scale: up to 40 guests inside, or as many as 60 total once the outdoor seating is folded in, and those events are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday evenings starting at 6:30 or 7pm. That evening start and the two-night private event window are worth building a timeline around early, since they shape when a couple can actually hold the room.

Amenities

A full cocktail bar runs the room, pouring craft cocktails alongside coffee and hot chocolate, and private events come with catering menu options built around the space. The factory itself is part of the amenity: observation windows let guests watch chocolate made from heirloom, fair trade Criollo cocoa beans, the same beans behind a chocolate line now sold through more than 100 retailers around the country.

Parking is public rather than dedicated, available at Bailey Park, the Fourth and Church Deck, and the Link Apartments Deck, all off Patterson Avenue, worth flagging to guests ahead of time since there is no private lot at the door. Outdoor seating is available but not covered, so a couple building an outdoor cocktail hour around it should have a fallback in mind for weather.

Location & Getting There

The building sits across from Bailey Park and next to the Coal Pit, once used for coal storage when this was a working power plant, with the original R.J. Reynolds brick smokestacks still visible from the property as a reminder of what it used to be. Piedmont Triad International Airport is the nearest airport for guests flying in.

The Innovation Quarter setting puts the venue inside a walkable, mixed use pocket of downtown Winston-Salem rather than a standalone building on its own grounds, in a modern renovated complex with public amenities close by. Regular hours run Tuesday and Wednesday from noon to 6pm, Thursday to 8pm, Friday and Saturday from 10am to 11pm, and Sunday noon to 6pm, closed Mondays, a schedule worth checking against any private event booked outside those windows. Indoors, the room mixes hard surfaces, glass, metal, and factory equipment behind observation windows, which makes for a lively, reflective acoustic environment, so a DJ setup here benefits from being positioned to project across the lounge without fighting the reverberation off all that glass and metal.