When Benny's decided to open a second Richmond location this summer, the plan looked simple enough. The Blacksburg-born pizza chain has grown to nearly 40 locations by doing the same thing over and over: giving each new spot a name that riffs on "Benny's" with a different last name attached, the way its Fan location became Benny Ventano's back in 2019. Scott's Addition was supposed to get the same treatment.
Then the owners looked at how close the two Richmond locations actually sit to each other and changed course. The new shop, which opened at 2943 W. Marshall St. this June, is simply called Benny's Pizza Scott's Addition. Co-owner Mark Balderson said the switch happened specifically to avoid confusing people who might cross paths with both locations in the same week. That's a small decision, but it says something about where this neighborhood is right now. Scott's Addition has stopped being a place where new businesses just add up. It's dense enough that even the same ownership group has to actively manage against competing with itself.
A Pizzeria That Had to Rename Itself
Benny's isn't the only pizza story unfolding on these blocks this summer. A few streets over, pop-up favorite Pizzeria Delores has been finishing out a brick-and-mortar buildout at 3001 W. Clay St., with co-owner Maxwell Sayer telling Richmond BizSense in early July that the Sicilian-style spot was on track to open before summer's end. That puts three related-but-separate pizza concepts operating within an easy walk of each other, two of them under one ownership group that had to think carefully about what to call the second one.
| Pizzeria | Address | Status as of August 2026 | What sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benny's Pizza Scott's Addition | 2943 W. Marshall St. | Open since early June, running full hours by the Fourth of July | Late-night hours until 2 a.m., a staff of eight growing toward twelve |
| Pizzeria Delores | 3001 W. Clay St. | Buildout finishing, expected open by end of summer | Sicilian-style, grew out of a local pop-up before going permanent |
| Benny Ventano's | The Fan, Richmond | Open since 2019 | Same founders as the Scott's Addition shop, kept on a separate name on purpose |
The Benny's space itself tells part of the story too. It sits in a building leased by the Chasen, a new mid-rise apartment project from developer Capital Square, on a lot that had been vacant since the previous tenant, a tea shop called T Caf, closed the year before. New restaurant space in Scott's Addition increasingly isn't standalone. It's arriving stitched into new residential buildings, which is a different growth pattern than the standalone brewery boom that built the neighborhood's reputation a decade ago.
The Owner Who Wouldn't Compete With Himself
The pizza situation isn't the only place where a Scott's Addition operator has had to think about not stepping on their own toes. Rick Lyons already owns Lunch, which opened in 2011, and Supper, which followed in 2014, both anchoring the corner of Summit Avenue and West Marshall Street. When Supper relocated a few doors down to 3023 W. Marshall St., Lyons still held the lease on its old space at 1215 Summit and didn't want to just fill it with something that would pull customers away from his other two spots.
What he opened instead, debuting June 2, was Hang RVA, a Tex-Mex bar built around a completely different service model. There's no table service. Customers order at the bar, get their food and drinks, and find a seat wherever there's room. The menu sticks to tacos, quesadillas, nachos and elote, all priced between five and fourteen dollars. All three restaurants, Lunch, Supper and Hang, share the beer garden that sits between them.
"[Hang] is just a place to literally just hang out and relax," Lyons told a Richmond television station about the new spot.
That's a deliberate answer to a real problem: how do you keep growing your footprint in a neighborhood you already occupy without cannibalizing the business you built there first. Lyons solved it by making Hang different enough in price, format and cuisine that it draws its own crowd rather than splitting his existing one.
Not Every New Opening Is Fighting for the Same Table
If pizza and casual Tex-Mex were the only things arriving this summer, you could reasonably wonder whether Scott's Addition has more restaurants than it has demand. The counterpoint arrived June 6 at the Ballast complex, where Slack Tide Fish Co. opened under Chef Caleb Shriver, previously of Dutch & Co., alongside general manager Adam Stull and beverage director Steve Yang. The restaurant is built around global coastal fare, with an oyster bar and a cocktail program that pulls from Mid-Atlantic ingredients rather than the tacos-and-tap-list format that dominates the rest of the neighborhood.
That's a useful contrast. Slack Tide isn't competing with Benny's or Hang RVA for the same Tuesday-night decision. It's widening what a resident can order without leaving these same six or eight blocks, which is a different kind of growth than three pizzerias splitting one customer base. The neighborhood absorbing a fourth or fifth new concept doesn't automatically mean the market is oversaturated. It depends on whether the new opening is actually offering something the existing spots don't.
What Actually Fills a Week Here
The restaurant openings get the headlines, but the thing that makes Scott's Addition function day to day is a genuinely busy weekly calendar that has nothing to do with any single new business. Pulling from what's actually on the books this month:
- Trivia Night at Strangeways Brewing, every Tuesday, free
- Diversity Thrift Classroom pop-ups at Iridian Gallery, recurring on Monday evenings
- Big Brainz Live SINGO, a '90s music trivia-bingo hybrid, at Cirrus Vodka, later this month
- Burlesque Bingo at Blue Bee Cider, arriving in early September
- The Black Girl Market at The Workshop by T&D, closing out September
That's according to the live event feed at VibeRVA, which tracks what's actually scheduled at Scott's Addition venues rather than what's simply available on a normal night. Zoom out to the fall calendar and the neighborhood's biggest recurring draw is the Scott's Addition Pumpkin Festival, a free event held every last Saturday of October with live music and local craft beer.
The pattern worth noticing is that this weekly rhythm existed before any of this summer's restaurant openings and would keep existing without them. The new restaurants are additions to an already-functioning social calendar, not the thing holding it together.
If You Already Live Here
A few practical notes for anyone deciding where to spend an evening this month. Benny's Pizza Scott's Addition keeps late hours, open until 2 a.m., which puts it in a small club of options for anyone out past a normal dinner crowd. Slack Tide is newer and drawing attention for its oyster bar, so a reservation is worth making rather than assuming you can walk in. Pizzeria Delores hadn't formally opened as of this writing, so W. Clay Street near the 3001 block is worth watching over the next few weeks if you've been following the pop-up.
None of this changes because a house down the street sells or a new apartment building leases up. It changes because specific people, Rick Lyons, Mark Balderson, Maxwell Sayer, Chef Caleb Shriver, made specific decisions about what this neighborhood needed next. That's the actual texture of living here this summer, and it's worth knowing regardless of what you do for work or where you park your car after 9 p.m.
Keeping track of who's opening what and why is part of paying attention to a place over years, not just checking in when you need something. Hank Cosby has been doing that across Richmond and Powhatan long enough to know the difference between a neighborhood adding restaurants and a neighborhood actually changing shape. Whenever you're ready to talk about what either kind of change means for your own address, that conversation is one phone call away.
