Wedding DJ at Joyners in Winston Salem, NC

The Space

Joyner’s occupies a brick building at Fourth and Burke in Winston-Salem’s historic West End that dates to 1892, built after the original 1891 wooden grocery store on the same corner was demolished and replaced with something larger. The bricks for that 1892 building came from the dismantled 1868 Winston Male Academy downtown, so the walls themselves are a repurposed piece of an even older Winston-Salem structure.

John T. Joyner ran his grocery here for a quarter century before selling to R.B. Crawford in 1916, and the space stayed a grocery business into the 1940s before eventually sitting empty and then reopening as a bar in 2020. The renovation kept the original walls and ceilings, with architectural details from the 1890s still visible in the current design, so the room reads as genuinely old rather than built to look that way.

Capacity & Layout

The main floor operates as a public bar, while an upstairs private lounge is available separately for events, and together the two floors hold up to 200 people, with the upstairs space alone holding around 100. That split matters for planning: a couple can take the upstairs private room for a more contained gathering, or book both floors for a larger crowd that spreads across two distinct levels rather than one open room.

Handicap accessible parking and restrooms are available, and the main floor includes outdoor sidewalk seating as part of the layout, which gives guests a spot to step outside during a reception without leaving the venue’s footprint entirely. The building’s 2.5 story brick structure means the upstairs private lounge is physically separated from the street-level bar, giving events there a quieter, more enclosed feel than the ground floor.

Amenities

The bar carries a full selection of craft cocktails, beer, wine, and bourbon, so drink service for an event is built around an existing program rather than a one-off setup for the night. Outside catering is allowed, along with event coordination support, which gives a couple flexibility to bring in their own caterer rather than being locked into a single kitchen.

Regular hours run 4pm to 2am Monday through Friday and noon to 2am on weekends, so an evening reception is working within a space that is genuinely built for nightlife rather than closing down early. That late schedule is worth knowing when planning a wedding timeline here, since the room’s normal rhythm runs later than a typical banquet hall.

Location & Getting There

The building sits at the corner of Fourth and Burke in the West End, one of Winston-Salem’s historic districts, close enough to downtown that guests staying nearby can walk or take a short drive in. The sidewalk seating out front ties the venue into the neighborhood rather than setting it apart from it.

We have worked an event in this space before, so we know the upstairs private lounge, separated from the street-level bar, holds sound differently than the open ground floor: the original plaster walls and ceiling upstairs keep a DJ setup more contained, while the main floor’s exposed brick and street-facing windows let sound carry more, which is worth planning around depending on which floor, or both, a couple books.