Wedding DJ at Tobacco Road Brewery in Raleigh, NC

The Space

The building that houses Tobacco Road Brewery went up in 1910 to power Raleigh’s electric street car system, and the Raleigh Electric Company Power House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. Tobacco Road Sports Cafe, founded in 2008 by brothers Brian, Alex, and Rommie Amra, moved its brewery and restaurant into the historic Powerhouse building in December 2016 and started brewing on site in 2017, turning a piece of Raleigh’s electrical infrastructure into a working restaurant and event space.

Private event spaces inside the building included the Press Box, a room with floor-to-ceiling glass walls and a private wrap-around mezzanine overlooking the main restaurant floor and the brewery below, and the Overlook, a separate room with views down to the lower mezzanine and dining area from its own private level. A first-floor Brewery Dining Room ran alongside the brewing operation with its own full bar, and the building also held a game room and an outdoor patio.

Capacity & Layout

The private event rooms handled parties of 12 up to 600 guests across the building, with individual rooms seating 55 to 65 people and standing capacity of 75 to 85 in each. A couple weighing this building against a single large ballroom would have been choosing something different: a set of distinct rooms on different levels, each with its own view of the brewery or dining floor, rather than one open space sized to the whole guest list.

That layout suited a wedding that wanted variety over the course of an evening, cocktail hour in the game room with its pool tables and arcade games, dinner in the Brewery Dining Room next to the working brewery, and a private room like the Press Box or the Overlook for toasts or a smaller gathering within the larger event. The multi-room format meant the day could move rather than staying fixed in one footprint.

Amenities

Multiple full bars operated throughout the building, including one built into the first-floor Brewery Dining Room, and the venue brewed its own beer using local ingredients sourced from area malt companies, farmer’s markets, and local chocolate and coffee businesses. Head Brewer Darryl Wells’ beers had earned recognition from the Great American Beer Festival and the U.S. Open Beer Championship, which made the on-site brewery itself a talking point for a reception rather than just a backdrop.

The building’s game room, with pool tables, skeeball, pinball, and arcade games, gave guests something to do between the ceremony and dinner service without leaving the venue, and the outdoor patio offered a second option for cocktail hour when the weather allowed it. Parking was available nearby at the Powerhouse Square Parking Deck, a short walk from the building itself.

Location & Getting There

The Raleigh location closed after Saturday, May 31, 2026, and is no longer operating as a venue, so this page reflects the building and event spaces as they existed while the brewery was open rather than a property couples can currently book. It is included here because our team worked an event inside it before the closure, in the historic Powerhouse building in downtown Raleigh.

With its glass-walled private rooms on different mezzanine levels and a first-floor dining room next to an active brewery, the building’s layout meant a DJ setup had to account for sound traveling between an open ground floor and rooms overlooking it from above, a very different acoustic environment from a single sealed reception hall.