Malone, Washington (CNN) -- The post office in the tiny Washington town of Malone sells beer and cigarettes. Live worms for fishing, too. The boxes for fixed-rate shipping are wedged between racks of beef jerky and $6.99 sunglasses.

The Malone location is what the U.S. Postal Service has dubbed a "village" post office. It's inside Red's Hop N' Market, the town mini-mart where locals like to buy lottery tickets and a case of beer before the weekend.

It's the only village post office in the country, but soon a similar hybrid may be coming to a town near you.

As the Postal Service buckles under a $9 billion debt, the mail agency has looked for ways to slash operating costs.

"The primary thing we look at is how much revenue they (post offices) generate (and) has that revenue been going down," said Ernie Swanson, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service in Seattle.

"(At) a lot of these offices, there's a postmaster and no other employee. So do they have an hour or two of work a day, and we are paying them for eight hours?"

Some 3,700 post offices may soon face being turned into village post offices, according to the Postal Service. Last week, Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe testified at a Senate hearing that as many as 220,000 post office employees could lose their jobs in the restructuring.

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For Malone -- the test ground for the first village post office -- having mail service quite literally put the town on the map.

Search for Malone on Google Maps, and the only landmark that comes up for the entire town is the original, now closed, post office.

Cheryl Kim and her husband, Johnny, own the Red's Hop N' Market, where the village post office is located.

When the couple received a letter last year from the Postal Service inquiring whether they would incorporate the post office into their store, Cheryl Kim said they were confused.