After a quarter-century pouring wine on Park Avenue, 33 Wine Shop & Bar will close for good following its last night of service on Aug. 28. Owners James Smallwood and Jessica Spitzer say rising costs and declining revenue have made the Lafayette Square staple impossible to sustain, ending a run that began 25 years ago in one of St. Louis's oldest historic districts.
The closure, first reported by St. Louis Magazine, comes as the shop faced a lease renewal decision this fall. Smallwood told the magazine that the costs were going through the roof, pointing to business insurance that jumped from $6,000 a year in 2013, when he bought the bar, to $24,000 a year in 2026. That kind of spike tracks with broader industry trends — commercial insurance premiums for full-service restaurants with high liquor sales typically run 1.5 to 3 times higher than national averages, according to Insureon, with full coverage packages averaging $3,000 to $6,000 annually this year.
Smallwood has deep roots in the neighborhood. He moved into Lafayette Square's Wireworks Lofts in 2003 and spent a decade as a regular at the bar before leaving his job as a corporate network analyst for AT&T to buy the business from Jeff Stettner in 2013. Stettner had owned the shop since 2009, when he acquired it from founder Jake Hafner, who left to open The Civil Life Brewing Co. Hafner once said 33 did not place beer and wine on a lofty pedestal, and the bar reportedly served $5 and $15 glasses of wine during his tenure.
A Pandemic Pivot and a Wedding on Park Avenue
Co-owner Jessica Spitzer's path to the bar was equally winding. She started working full time at 33 Wine Shop on March 16, 2020 — the same week Missouri Gov. Mike Parson declared a state of emergency over COVID-19 — after quitting her job as an economics analyst at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. She helped pivot the business toward online to-go sales and wine tastings on Zoom to survive the lockdowns. Five years later, in May 2025, Smallwood and Spitzer were married at the bar; the couple now plans to move to a new residence in University City, and Spitzer will oversee winding down operations.
By January 2025, the shop carried roughly 900 wine labels and 4,000 bottles, backed by a three-tier wine club with 133 members that offered select monthly wines and a bar discount. Smallwood described 33 as a public house that brought people together, and the bar built a reputation as an incubator for local talent — general manager Steve Russell ran operations for years, while Andrei Ivanov and Brandon Kern honed their craft there, and Ted Wilson and Sean Netzer both worked at the shop before co-founding Union Loafers.
Shrinking Margins Across the Wine World
The shop's struggles mirror a national squeeze on independent hospitality businesses. A 2026 National Restaurant Association survey found 90% of food and beverage operators cite food, labor, commercial insurance, energy, and swipe fees as primary threats to profitability, according to Insurance Journal. Consumer habits have shifted too: U.S. wine consumption dropped 4.3 percent in 2025, per the OIV, even as recreational cannabis has been legal in Missouri since 2022. Smallwood himself returned to the corporate world in July, a sign of just how thin the margins had gotten before the shop's final weeks.
33 Wine Shop is far from alone among St. Louis-area wine bars feeling the pinch. In Webster Groves, Robust Wine Bar closed after 19 years in January, following an $84,000 rent dispute with its landlord that produced a $151,000 court judgment in March, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Robust had already closed its downtown St. Louis location back in 2018 amid falling convention and tourism traffic.
A Commercial Strip in Flux
The loss lands especially hard on Park Avenue, Lafayette Square's primary commercial strip lined with Victorian architecture in a district designated in 1972 as the city's first official historic district, built around a park set aside in 1836 as the oldest public park west of the Mississippi River, per the Lafayette Square Restoration Committee. Just four weeks before 33 Wine Shop's announcement, its immediate next-door neighbor at 1915 Park Avenue, Baileys' Chocolate Bar, permanently closed on Aug. 1 after 22 years as part of a corporate reorganization, as Hoodline previously reported.
Not every sign points downward for St. Louis wine drinkers, though. In nearby Fox Park, the team behind Little Fox is opening a new wine bistro and bottle shop called Sur Lie this September, carrying roughly 125 minimal-intervention wines with retail sales by day and European-style bistro service by night, Hoodline has reported. It suggests the city's wine-bar model may be shifting toward leaner, hybrid formats even as legacy spots like 33 and Robust wind down. Until then, 33 Wine Shop & Bar remains open at 1913 Park Avenue, still charging its $15 corkage fee on bottles opened at the bar alongside a 20% service charge, with the countdown now on to last call on Aug. 28.
