Some 13 years after her husband’s health scare changed her life and built the foundation for an unusual restaurant business, Sylvia Thompson is ready to retire.

The Licious Dishes and Greens & Vines founder has found a buyer for her raw-vegan-gourmet restaurant and meal-plan business who will not only continue her vision, “but also add healthy house-made noodles, soups, tea time and classes,” Thompson said.

Greens & Vines is at 909 Kapiolani Blvd. across from Blaisdell Center.

Thompson was not yet ready to name the buyers, but said they are from Beijing, are Buddhists and are vegetarians.

She is “so happy that these buyers want to continue on my legacy,” she said. “It’s time for me to finish my recipe book and take it global.”

The transition will bring some pain to the faithful, however, as Thompson will close Greens &Vines on March 31.

“When it is time to reopen, they will rehire our staff and continue the meal plans, restaurant service,” and launch new aspects of the business, Thompson said. “They’ve been looking for a space to start a vegetarian restaurant, so the timing and contacts were ideal.”

The reopening date is pending, and the restaurant will be renamed.

Thompson has been seen by many as a trailblazer and pioneer, adapting a vegan lifestyle to help her husband, Pete, recover from a heart attack in 2004. She has introducing many an omnivore to plant-based dishes, either at her restaurant or through the meal service she started in 2007. (Pete died in 2015 of cancer).

Greens & Vines was mentioned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, alongside other vegan and “vegan-friendly” restaurants, in its 2016 list of the top 10 U.S. cities for vegans. It was only a little embarrassing that PETA referred to Honolulu as “the Big Pineapple.”

On the Greens & Vines website, Hono­lulu Star-Advertiser restaurant critic Nadine Kam’s choice of Licious Dishes as an Ilima Award winner in 2011 is credited with spurring Thompson to start a restaurant, which was opened the next year.

Greens & Vines’ raw vegan gourmet concept was likely ahead of its time, said Jo McGarry, founder of MoJo LLC, a restaurant specialist and real estate advising company.

For a vegetarian restaurant with a broader menu to open in the space makes sense, according to McGarry. “I think vegetarian food is just so exciting and accepted, it’s very approachable nowadays.”

It is important that food have a spiritual element, McGarry said. “I love the idea of a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant … it has a lovely warmth about it.”

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