Casino manager believes she hit jackpot in coming to Bristol
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The first time Allie Evangelista ever saw a slot machine was when she began working at a casino. Before becoming manager of another casino, she didn’t know a deck contained 52 cards.
Growing up in Brazil, Evangelista dreamed of being a travel agent or traveling the world as a flight attendant, but a bottom-to-top 16-year career in the gaming industry now has her poised to oversee Virginia’s first casino — the Bristol Casino, future home of Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol — opening later this year at the former Bristol Mall.
It has been a long, eventful adventure for someone whose first job in this country was working as a hotel housekeeper.
“I wanted to visit the world, I wanted to learn cultures and see what people were like and cultures were like everywhere else,” Evangelista said of her youthful wanderlust.
Twenty-three years ago, she moved to the U.S. and settled in Florida.
“I worked at Walt Disney World while I was in college and met my husband there. When I finished college in Brazil I decided I would take a shot. When I first was able to get a job, which takes a little time, I started as a hotel housekeeper,” she said. “My goal was to get to the front desk, and I was able to do that. I set up breakfast in the morning for the customers. It was on International Drive near Walt Disney World, so there was a lot of tourism.”
During her time in the hospitality industry she learned every aspect of hotel operations before being offered a job at a Missouri riverboat casino in 2006.
“I started in slots, and I had never seen a slot machine in my life until we actually went there,” she said. “It was a big place, very lively, very, very vibrant. There was a lot of noise and energy in the air. It was a Friday afternoon and busy. … I remember the energy on the gaming floor, the machines and the music, it was like being in a night club; that I was at a party.”
That party kicked off 16 years working at multiple locations with opportunities to learn the “bread and butter” of the industry — slots, card games, table games.
“We had dealer’s schools for managers at night, so I had to go to class and learn craps and blackjack. We had to go to class to certify, but when I went into table games, I didn’t know how many cards were in a deck,” Evangelista said. “But you need to be humble enough to know that people have been doing this for years. They’re there to help you and teach you. It was exciting.”
She later spent two years at the Hollywood Casino at The Meadows near Pittsburgh, where she became general manager and had to quickly learn the harness racing industry as the casino’s adjoining track ran about 300 days per year.
“It was a very intense operation, a very active race track, and I had to learn everything about horse racing. It was a lot of fun and, again, you rely on people that understand the business, and let them teach you what they know and together, you can make the business better.”
From there, she became vice president and general manager of the Hollywood Gaming casino and race track in Ohio.
“When I got to Ohio, I thought, ‘I’ve got this horse racing thing.’ Then I get there, and it’s a completely different business — thoroughbred rather than harness,” she said. “I used to go pet the horses if I was having a bad day at The Meadows, but in Ohio the horses are not even that friendly. Just the business is so much different so that was another learning curve for me. But I like the unknown.”
Evangelista had barely landed at her most recent job — at Hollywood Casino Perryville in Maryland in 2021 — when a new opportunity appeared.
“Even though gaming is a very large industry, we all know each other. I had friends I worked with in prior jobs who are now with Hard Rock telling me how amazing the company is and how they loved their job. So I started paying close attention,” she said. “They (Hard Rock) reached out to see if I was interested in a job. I had just arrived in Maryland, so I was not ready to move again, I was well taken care of by my company, but I was willing to look at it.”
She ultimately visited Bristol, met with Hard Rock Chief Operating Officer Jon Lucas and Bristol project partners Jim McGlothlin and Clyde Stacy and decided it was “the right time” to join the company.
“The brand was the main reason. I want this to be the last company I work for, so I wanted to make the right decision,” Evangelista said. “The one thing that stood out to me for Bristol was, in all the years and casinos I’ve worked for or locations I worked in, small town America has always been welcoming to me, have benefitted from casinos and embraced the culture of gaming.
“When I came here and understood they had embraced this project and voted the project in, I knew it would be a good transition. It also gives me an opportunity to do what I do, which is give back to the community — not just the taxes — but to see what this is going to look like two years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now. It’s going to change people’s lives,” she said.
While the full resort is a couple of years away, the temporary gaming space is quickly becoming a reality inside the former Belk women’s store on one end of the property.
“It is a very good thing that we can operate the temporary facility at the same location where the permanent facility will be. When we open the doors we’ll have this fun place for people to come in — the Bristol Casino, Future Home of Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol — we open the doors and focus on the business while construction can focus on building the project, and we’re not sitting and waiting,” Evangelista said.
“Also, people who may not have as much experience will have an opportunity to learn the business while we’re still operating a smaller scale before we scale into this major resort that we’re going to become,” she added.
Evangelista knows this will be Virginia’s first casino, which will attract a lot of attention.
“We want to be a place for people to come and have some fun. We want people to feel comfortable, have a great time, be well taken care of. … I’ve worked in places where the local community is our main guests. They’re there every night, or twice a week. We know each other by name so it becomes a big family between team members and guests.
“And we want to take great care of our team members. We know each other by name. Team members have access to me 24/7. I know everyone that works with me; we’re truly family. To me, team members being happy and wanting to work is a priority. It’s not just my priority, Hard Rock is known for being an employer of choice,” she said. “Casinos will be great for Virginia. They will be great for Bristol, but Hard Rock is a great match for this location.”
While she’s only been in town for a few days, Evangelista has been touched by the hospitality and the attitudes of people she’s met — whether at last week’s hiring event, eating at a local restaurant or buying groceries.
“Everybody is so welcoming and so friendly and so personable,” she said. “Which makes this position even more exciting, because I know these are the people that are going to be working on my team.”
