Evan Byrne has sold Hop Craft Pizza and Beer in the Fan to focus on his vegan pizza business, Udderless Foods.
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Byrne sold the restaurant, located in a former gas station at 1600 W. Cary St., to Yael Cantor, the owner of Susie’s Café and Deli.
Byrne launched the Udderless brand in 2023 after getting a big response for his vegan pies at the restaurant. The frozen pies are now sold at a variety of locations around Richmond, including Ellwood Thompson’s and Libbie Market.
“We were much more interested in devoting our efforts to the frozen pizzas — they sort of jumped off and there’s a lot of chatter about them,” Byrne told the Times-Dispatch. “The restaurant business is tough — we had a lot of fun, but we had the opportunity to sell it to Susie’s and it felt like a good thing to do, so we moved forward with it.”
He said the frozen pizzas are a “more sustainable business long term,” according to the report.
The Udderless brand was formed after Byrne experimented with making his own vegan cheese. He then impressed the CEO of a popular vegan products company with his frozen vegan pies using that cheese — something he shared with Richmond Inno last year.
While Byrne was previously making the Udderless pizzas at the restaurant, he’s since moved the operation to Hatch Kitchen, a food incubator in Richmond, according to the report. The pizzas remain handmade. He also said he landed a distribution deal with P10 Foods, who is moving the Udderless pizzas throughout the Southeast.
Byrne told the Times-Dispatch he’s looking to scale up the brand. And his Hop Craft pizzas, which are nonvegan, are also available in some frozen-food aisles.
