Henrico saw new restaurant activity across four corridors this year, and no two stories unfolded the same way. That difference matters more than the headline count.
Start on Brook Road in Northern Henrico, where Holy Burger opened this year in the building that used to house a Wendy's at 8300 Brook Road. It's the first Virginia location for the New York City chain, known for handcrafted burgers made from halal beef alongside a full plant-based menu. A few doors down in the same Hungarybrook shopping center, a second burger concept called Burger Haven is opening at 8340 Brook Road. Two burger chains, same short stretch of road, arriving within weeks of each other. The Henrico Citizen framed it as brewing competition when the second lease was announced in February, and by September, Holy Burger's Yelp listing showed it fully open and serving, menu updates and all.
That's one kind of restaurant story: two operators betting on the exact same corner of the county at the exact same time.
Fifteen minutes away on Staples Mill Road, a different kind of expansion happened with none of that friction. Layne's Chicken Fingers, the Texas-based chain, opened its second Richmond-area location on September 15 at 8801 Staples Mill Road. Its first area location has been running in Ashland, while the Staples Mill location brings the chain to Henrico. Henrico business owner Khurram Burney, who helped bring the brand into Virginia, is running the new location too, with more expansion already planned around the state. No shopping center standoff here. Just steady, planned growth from someone who's done this before.
Over in Short Pump, the story is neither competition nor expansion. It's replacement. Kura Revolving Sushi Bar has opened at 11331 West Broad Street, in the space that used to be Persis Indian Grill. One concept closed, another moved in, and the West Broad corridor kept doing what it's done for years: churning through tenants in the same handful of storefronts as tastes shift.
And then there's Laburnum Avenue, where the pattern breaks entirely.
Why the Laburnum Project Doesn't Fit the Other Three
Culver's, the Wisconsin-born chain famous for its ButterBurgers, fried cheese curds and frozen custard, is bringing its first Virginia location to 4306 South Laburnum Avenue, directly across from White Oak Village in Eastern Henrico. The site currently holds a vacant building that was once an Applebee's and later a Juicy Crab. Instead of leasing that space the way Holy Burger, Layne's, and Kura all did, the franchise group behind the project plans to demolish it and build a new, roughly 4,600-square-foot restaurant from scratch.
Jeff Liegel, co-founder of the franchise group S&L, which owns roughly 100 Culver's locations, explained the appeal of the chain's signature item to Richmond BizSense:
"We lightly butter the crown of the bun, toast it and use a fresh beef patty. That's definitely our hero product."
Liegel's group has wanted to enter the Richmond market for years but held off until Culver's had built out a local supply chain it could rely on. Henrico's most recent assessment valued the Laburnum parcel at $1.2 million, and the group ultimately paid $1,575,000 for the 5,002-square-foot building it now plans to tear down. That project involves demolition costs and a construction timeline rather than a lease. As of the most recent reporting, no firm opening date has been announced, and the project was still moving through planning and permitting.
Four restaurant stories, four different postures toward the same county. Here's how they line up side by side.
| Corridor | What's Opening | What It Replaced | Status as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brook Road, Northern Henrico | Holy Burger and Burger Haven | Former Wendy's (Holy Burger's building) | Holy Burger open; Burger Haven opening |
| West Broad Street, Short Pump | Kura Revolving Sushi Bar | Persis Indian Grill | Open |
| Staples Mill Road | Layne's Chicken Fingers (second area location) | N/A, new build-out in existing space | Opened September 15 |
| South Laburnum Avenue, Eastern Henrico | Culver's, first Virginia location | Vacant former Applebee's/Juicy Crab | Existing building to be demolished, no opening date set |
What the Split Actually Tells You
A resident driving between these four corridors is seeing four different restaurant patterns within the same county.
Brook Road is competitive enough right now that two national burger concepts are willing to open within walking distance of each other and let customers decide. That's not a sign of a corridor struggling to fill space. It's the opposite: enough foot traffic and enough confidence in that specific stretch that operators are willing to share the block rather than wait for a different one to open up.
Short Pump's West Broad corridor is doing what mature retail strips do. It absorbs closures and reopens with something new in the same footprint, and diners barely notice the seam. That kind of tenant turnover is a sign of a corridor that's fully built out. There's no room left to expand into, only room to replace.
Staples Mill Road is simpler than either of those. An operator who already proved a concept in Ashland is stepping into the next logical spot without a bidding war or a demolition permit. It's the least dramatic of the four stories, and also the easiest one to read: it's just growth, unremarkable because it works.
Laburnum Avenue is the outlier, and the reason is the corridor itself. White Oak Village has drawn national attention before, but it hasn't drawn a company willing to knock down an existing building and start over. The Culver's group is doing exactly that, betting that eastern Henrico's retail corridor is worth the extra time and cost of ground-up construction rather than settling for whatever storefront happens to be available. That's a different kind of vote of confidence than a lease renewal. It's a bet on the location itself, not just the building that happens to be sitting on it.
Put together, the four restaurant stories map onto four different approaches in the same restaurant cycle. Brook Road is in active competition. Short Pump is in steady replacement. Staples Mill is in simple expansion. And Laburnum is the one corridor pulling in the kind of capital that requires tearing something down before anything new goes up.
None of that shows up if you just count the restaurant activity described here. It only shows up when you look at where each project landed, and what each one had to do to get there.
If you're weighing which corner of Henrico fits how you actually want to live day to day, from the pace of a place like Brook Road to the steadier rhythm around Staples Mill, The Lemus Group can walk you through what each of these pockets of the county actually feels like on the ground, in English or Spanish.
