New restaurant Lyra’s Natural Kitchen opening at Stony Point Fashion Park

Lyra’s Natural Kitchen will open in the former La Hacienda and Chipotle space. (Charlotte Matherly photos)

Family ties and a career change are driving Stony Point Fashion Park’s newest restaurant. 

Ida Hite next month will open Lyra’s Natural Kitchen in the South Richmond mall, taking over a space that was most recently home to La Hacienda and Chipotle before that. 

The restaurant started as a catering business about a year and a half ago, Hite said, when she left her job in healthcare. She worked at Bon Secours for 18 years, but, inspired by her childhood and family, she’d always wanted to own a restaurant.

“One day I just said, ‘This is it. I’m done,’” Hite said. She got her business license a month later in November 2021, and Lyra’s Natural Kitchen came to be.

Ida Hite (right) and her daughter, Janna.

Hite’s familial motivations for getting into the food business span multiple generations. Her father was a farmer, hunter and fisherman, so they always had exotic meats, vegetables and fruit around. Her mom loved to cook and entertain at family functions. Her daughter, Janna, went vegetarian at age 12 and is raising Ida’s granddaughter, Lyra — the restaurant’s namesake — vegetarian, too.

“People are so happy when they’re eating. You don’t have too many arguments when people are eating. I think I saw that, how food makes people happy,” Hite said. “Then as I got older, you know, with my own children, I realized it’s really a little bit bigger than that. It’s about the healthy piece.”

With her daughter being vegetarian, Hite began to learn about healthy eating. She still eats meat, she said, but she and Janna embarked on a venture together to learn about plant-based cooking.

Lyra’s menu will focus on organic, non-GMO ingredients with a Southern twist. They’ll serve pancakes, eggs, bacon, fruit and acai bowls for breakfast, a variety of salads for lunch and dinner, plus a dinner of greens and mac ’n’ cheese. While meat will be available, Lyra’s will have vegan options too, Hite said. 

“Everything we use is going to be as natural as we can possibly get it,” Hite said.

A meal at Lyra’s will cost about $15-20. It’ll seat 35 people and have prepared to-go meals as well.

Hite said the hardest part of launching her first full-service restaurant has been raising capital. But she hit her mark of $40,000-$50,000 with the help of an investor and nearly $10,000 raised through a Kiva crowdfunding loan that wrapped up about two weeks ago.

Kiva is a crowdfunding platform akin to GoFundMe that operates on a loan system rather than donations.

Getting the business open and running it day-to-day is also a family affair. Janna is managing sales and branding for the restaurant, and Hite’s husband, who works in utilities for the City of Richmond, has been helping set up the restaurant as well. She’ll also employ a part-time chef, a catering manager and someone to help her with finances.

Lyra’s owl logo is also inspired by family, particularly by an owl that visited Janna’s window every night when she was a kid. Hite remembers a Bible story about owls, in which God put a nation of people out in the desert, and the owl was the only thing that prospered and flourished there.

“The owl, to me, represents the underdog, so to speak, where even if things look destitute or desolate, you can still thrive,” Hite said. “I kind of feel like that’s what we are … with all of COVID and leaving my job, and I didn’t even know what’s gonna happen next. It’s an unknown story for us. But I feel that we’re that owl, and we’re gonna prosper in the desert.”