For its size, Charlottesville’s restaurant scene punches above its weight. Maybe it’s the university and its steady stream of new residents, or the city’s curious palate and variety of tastes.
But ask Charlottesville’s longtime restaurant owners, bar managers, servers, cooks, and other hospitality professionals why the area’s restaurants were so good over the past few decades, especially compared to similarly sized cities, and there’s a chance they’ll mention one name: Wilson “Will” Richey.
After arriving in town as a young man in the 1990s, Wilson played a role in the revitalization or creation of over a dozen area restaurants over the following decades, including local favorites like the Whiskey Jar, the Bebedero, Högwaller Brewing, Café Frank, Duner’s, the Alley Light, the Wine Guild, and more.
Tragically, Richey passed away in December 2023 at age 47, after a single-car accident while driving home. He left behind friends and family, including two children, as well as a tight network of collaborators who were left reeling.
Now, a year-and-a-half later, another part of his legacy is coming into focus: he left behind a recipe for success for his colleagues, friends, and restaurant partners.
Most of his restaurants are still open, and his former proteges are carrying on his mission, creating places where people can connect and find joy over a good meal. Many of them say it’s because Richey wasn’t just trying to develop businesses; he wanted to develop the people who run them, so they’d last.
“Will was motivated to build places that make people happy,” says Simon Davidson, a friend and popular local food writer who runs a blog called The Charlottesville 29. “He wanted to make places where all the elements would be in harmony: the food, the music, the service, the setting. He was someone who believed those things could correctly align, or they could incorrectly align. And that approach gave him great success.”
Even before all the start-up projects, Richey
had an innate talent for good ideas since
the very beginning.
He grew up in Rockville, Maryland, and arrived in Charlottesville in the 1990s as an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, where other members of his family had attended.
He was drawn immediately to Charlottesville’s bustling food service industry, working as a sommelier at L’étoile, and later at a regional wine distributor. But he was always an ideas person, says Evan Williams, a friend and former co-worker from the wine distribution days.
“Back then, Will and I and others would get together and would hang out and drink wine and learn things,” Williams recalls. “So we decided to start a wine club, but I think right away Will had grander aspirations than that. He was envisioning something with high-backed leather chairs and a business license.”
The result was one of his early collaborative projects, still going strong: the Wine Guild, a wine shop in Charlottesville’s Rose Hill neighborhood. The space is small, but the wines and other spirits are carefully curated, and Guild members receive regular messages about new wines that the Guild has tried.
Williams, an architect by trade, still writes many of the organization’s reviews and messages to members. The growth and sustainability of the Wine Guild, even after Richey moved on to other projects, is representative of the way he did things, Williams says.
He was also always quick to start the next project. In 2006, Richey bought his first restaurant: Revolutionary Soup, a Charlottesville institution that seemed primed for the infusion of new energy and vision that became the hallmarks of Richey’s culinary endeavors.
“In retrospect, it’s kind of odd that it was his first project,” Davidson recalls. “After that, almost all of his restaurants and projects were his own creations.”
At “Rev Soup,” as it’s locally known, Richey focused on ingredients, dining atmosphere, staff functionality, and making sure people enjoyed the experience of coming to the restaurant. He expanded its original basement location into a second on the Corner, near UVA, and it’s still in operation.
Rev Soup would set a familiar model for what was to come: Richey brought in partners, people he thought he could work with to make the restaurant fulfill its potential, including current owner Tres Pittard, a longtime collaborator, who Davidson described on his blog as Richey’s emergency chef, coming into his restaurants to troubleshoot.
Williams is also an owner of Högwaller Brewing—a venture he started with Richey shortly before his death. He says that Richey had a rare ability to involve others in his ideas, creating teams that could take up the baton if he decided to move on. And he did move on quite a bit.
He’d be dreaming of a new restaurant or project even before a current one was off the ground. So once a restaurant was stable and operating, he would often sell his share to his partners, giving him capital to start on a new project. He’d always want to own the building for a new restaurant, and he’d always have a vision for the space that went beyond the menu, Davidson says.
“That was a win-win-win across the board,” explains Davidson. “It’s good for the community, because he’s building new things, and it’s great for his employees. It also removes a ceiling on the normal restaurant employees, because they don’t max out at management. They can actually
enter ownership.”
Eventually, Richey created Ten Course Hospitality, a company to support his many restaurants and projects in the area, and he developed a deep roster of collaborators, starting restaurants all over the city.
The Loss, & Continuing OnThe Charlottesville eateries that Richey inspired even include a few that opened their doors after his passing.
Emily Harpster is the owner of SugarBear, which started out in 2022 as an ice cream wholesaler in Charlottesville. She and Richey were in a relationship at the time he died, and they’d had a few casual conversations about expanding her wholesale ice cream business into a retail location.
“Will and I would kind of joke that burgers and ice cream by the river is a match made in heaven,” Harpster says, referencing Högwaller Brewing. “And you know, a few weeks before he died, he said ‘I’ve got an idea for a space for you, we should talk.’ But we moved on to other things and the conversation never got finished.
Richey’s death in December 2023 hit his network hard, both professionally and personally. There were tributes—many documented movingly on the Charlottesville 29, Davidson’s food blog—but some of his collaborators, including the Williamses, had to learn on the job.
In her grief, Harpster found herself thinking about one of the conversations with Richey, where he’d mentioned that possible space for SugarBear. “I was thinking about a lot of things and I realized he was probably talking about the Double Horseshoe Saloon, which used to be in the building next to Högwaller.”
Harpster found herself suddenly embarking on a very Will Richey-style project. She decided to open up a retail location, leaning hard on the network of restaurateurs and others who had helped launch so many of his restaurants.
“It was like a fairly insane project to take on, just logistically,” she recalls with a laugh. “Grief makes you do kind of funny things. But I was thinking a lot about the way that he built places and spaces, and it really got in my head, what having a little ice cream joint down by the river could mean. I wanted to try and compose that scene in the way that he would have.”
That led to a lot of lists: they needed picnic tables, trees, a particular kind of vibe and a particular kind of menu. The details may have been a little different, but the process was just as Richey would have done it, Harpster says. She tried to see the entirety of the project and why it needed to exist before even beginning.
“The project became a lot more than just mine,” she says. “It was a way for a lot of people to work out a lot of what was going on with their grief. The contractors who worked on a lot of his restaurants helped me. The PR team [Do Me a Flavor] from his restaurants helped me.”
Staff from Revolutionary Soup came over to help troubleshoot some register problems. In every way, Harpster says, the community that Richey had built in Charlottesville showed up to help her launch SugarBear.
The launch was a joy and a chore all at the same time, she says.
“I told Simon Davidson, ‘If Will were still here, I would kick his ass right now,’” she laughs. “This is so hard.”
But Richey’s friends and associates aren’t just picking up the pieces that he left behind. Almost to a person, they say that the way he did things—not just the outcome—is what inspires them to continue.
“His legacy is so many places in Charlottesville,” Davidson says. “For one, it’s in the places that he built in a way that would be sustainable even after he’s gone. He employed and lifted up so many different people who are elsewhere in the food community now. Not even just at his places, but with others too. He was a mentor to so many.”Shortly after Richey’s death, many restaurants posted his favorite poem “An Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats as a memorial to Richey. Högwaller Brewing made a beer in his honor named for the poem, and Wil Smith created the artwork. “We went back and forth trying to figure out what we should brew,” Högwaller brewer and co-owner Mark Fulton wrote in an Instagram post. “Will loved stouts and lagers, so quickly we arrived at the obvious: a black lager. Ode to a Nightingale is a 5% alc/vol black lager with notes of baker’s chocolate, caramel, and plum.”