Mountainbrook Fresh Bread & Milk is where it all began in 1966. Maurice Jennings, a former flour broker, found this to be a natural fit for him and opened two bread stores in Burlington, NC. While operating the bread stores, he decided to give making fresh pizzas a shot. There was space in the current operation to accommodate it. There was a demand for take-out pizza. Carrying on the fresh theme made perfect sense. Thus, Pizza-To-Go was born. One thing led to another, and by 1972 there were six pizza restaurants that eventually would become known as Pizzaville.
Since not too many folks want pizza at seven in the morning, Maurice decided to put the ovens to use baking biscuits. A customer’s purchase of a fresh baked biscuit included a trip to the “jelly bar.” The customers, thankfully, weren’t one bit shy about telling us what they wanted. They wanted ham…a slice of good old Southern country ham on their biscuit. The jelly was out, country ham was in and soon customers were lined up out the doors.
 |
It wasn’t long before the made-from-scratch biscuits were outselling pizza. Maurice began entertaining the idea of opening a “full-time” biscuit restaurant. In 1975, he made the leap and opened the first Biscuitville on Patton Street in Danville, VA. The reception to the idea was tremendous and sales were great, initiating a boom in growth. The boom included a sweeping conversion of all the Pizzavilles into Biscuitvilles, as well as, the opening of brand new Biscuitvilles. By 1982, twenty-five restaurants were open serving ham, eggs, bacon, steak, chicken and sausage.
Today, Biscuitville has fifty restaurants in NC and VA and is led by Burney Jennings, Maurice’s son. On average, the company goes through 28,600 pounds of flour; 4,000 pounds of country ham; 11,500 pounds of sausage and 9,500 pounds of bacon every week. That’s a lot of growth and many biscuits sold all in the name of fresh, friendly and fast!
