Dating right back to its 2017 opening in East Vancouver, Resurrection Spirits has been one of those bars people end up actively seeking out rather than stumbling onto during a neighbourhood crawl.

Business-plan positives include a room that’s a winning mix of casual-industrial cool, retro-chic, and classic American-tavern—somehow both upscale yet welcoming when you show up in a Charli XCX t-shirt and beat-up Vans. Come for the dangling decanter lights, expansive mirror-polished bar, torched wooden beams, and dog-friendly patio. Stay for both the lovingly executed classic cocktails and the original creations, and pick up a bottle of its ready-for-a-perfect-Caesar Garlic Vodka while you’re at it.

Then there are the business challenges. Resurrection Spirits is located in a nondescript industrial area just south of Hastings Street and Commercial Drive—close to one of the great restaurant stretches in the city, and yet a little geographically cut off from the action. If you know, you go—and plenty of neighbourhood residents do on the regular. But first you have to be hip to the fact that Resurrection Spirits actually exists.

“We get a lot of people coming in and going, ‘This is great—until now we didn’t even know you were here,’” says director of operations Shawn Bachynski. “That’s what we’re here to fix—putting ourselves on people’s radar.”

The space has a deserved reputation as one of the city’s most chill cocktail destinations, and that vibe isn’t changing any time soon.

“One of the nice things about being a little bit out of the way is that it’s quiet,” Bachynski offers. “You’re not fighting a mad rush of people to get here. It’s a nice little place you come to and have a good time, knowing that it’s not going to be overrun.”

While weekends tend to be busy at Resurrection—including live music on Saturdays—weekdays can reflect the lack of foot traffic in the area. To help spread the word, the Franklin Street craft distillery is in the process of reinventing itself, sending a message that it’s now more than a place to stop by for a drink.

This past month has seen former Corduroy Pie Co pizza wizard Graham Marceau taking over Resurrection Spirits’ kitchen under the name of Frank’s Pizza and Bar. Artisanal—which is another word for truly next-level—options include Don the Jeweller (charred scallion cream, provolone, fennel sausage, pickled green chillies, fresh pineapple, and basil) and the Bee Sting (San Marzano tomato, Parmesan, pepperoni, oregano, honey drizzle, and house-made stracciatella cheese). The Drive has no shortage of top-flight pizza places. Add Frank’s to that celebrated list.

“I think that food is a big draw for a destination place—especially a destination drinking place,” Marceau says, seated with Bachynski at Resurrection Spirits. “There are only so many drinks you can have before you go, ‘I gotta get some bread in my stomach.’ ”

This isn’t the first time that Marceau, who started out in fine dining before perfecting his pizza game, has found himself part of the team at Resurrection.

“The very first project I did was here,” Marceau says. “We built out the framework of the kitchen in the back—it was a little snack venue with things like toasts. Everyone loved the food, but it didn’t really jump on people’s radar that we were doing food here. Anyone that did come and ordered food liked it, but, for the average guest, you came either at 4 o’clock or 10 o’clock.

He continues with, "They would bookend it on their dinner reservation. So we figured that, if we were going to relaunch food and try and do something more substantial, that we would try and go all in with a pizzeria the neighbourhood might want and embrace.”

Resurrection is a working distillery producing vodka, gin, rye, nocino, and more—you can see the giant still behind a glass wall separating the bar area from the rest of the space. When you order a negroni, martini, old fashioned, Manhattan, or sour, those spirits provide the backbone of classic cocktails, as well as signature drinks like its Purple Haze (lavender gin, Green Chartreuse, lemon, vanilla, bitters, soda) and Tropical Tease (coconut gin, pineapple, lemon, egg white).

“The approach is that we’re not too expensive, we use great local products, and we get to use the stuff that we make in house,” Bachynski says. “And that adds up to really good drinks.”

Over the coming weeks, Resurrection visitors can also order The Storyteller: a special cocktail created in collaboration with the Straight that includes the distillery’s new Abbey Green, which riffs off Green Chartreuse.

“No one knows exactly what’s in Chartreuse except the monks who make it in the French Alps,” Bachynski says. “Our distiller knew some of the base ingredients, and then just started kind of playing with things. It’s surprisingly close—not exact, but for something local, pretty awesome. I made a couple of Last Words with them, side by side, and they were both dynamite.”

As for the new Frank’s Pizza component of Resurrection, as simple as the name might be, Marceau suggests that a lot of thought went into it.

“Without sounding pretentious, I love the idea of Frank’s being a place where I don’t know whether people will get it,” he says with a laugh, noting that Frank’s is a reference to being on Franklin Street. “The first night we were open here I must have had 10 or 12 people ask me if I was Frank. We didn’t want to get dragged into the category of Frankie’s, a name that has done terrible things to Italian food. The thinking was more along the lines of Frank’s Bar, where you can have a good, stiff drink. Except that we happen to make pizza instead.”

Consider, then, Resurrection to be a sudden double threat, where the same amount of care that goes into the cocktails and distilling goes into the new food program. The goal is two-fold. One is to be there for the residents of East Vancouver, who’ve shown a deep love for craft businesses that are willing to plant roots in the community. The other is to give folks across the city a reason to head to a place that no one’s likely walking, cycling, or driving by. The challenge is simply getting them in that first time.

“If you look at other cities, there are similarities to what we’re doing here,” Marceau says. “New York is a perfect example—there’s a pizza place called Roberto’s that opened in Bushwick before that area was trendy. It was there before there was even a neighbourhood there, but people started taking the train from Manhattan because they loved it so much and it was so good.”

Closer to home, he cites Portland’s wildly celebrated Provisions as a great example that location isn’t everything. Sometimes a great room is enough.

“At Provisions, they make all their own charcuterie—it’s a wine bar in an industrial area like this. You bike there, there’s nothing around, and then all of a sudden there’s a building with like 100 people there,” says Marceau. “So I hope the pizza is hopefully matching the level of cocktails at Resurrection that people will want to make the pilgrimage here, want to stay, and want to come back. If you can get them to make the trek, you can make it happen.”

Resurrection Spirits and Frank’s Pizza are located at 1672 Franklin Street.