DANVILLE - Maurice Jennings used downtown Danville as the launching pad for a tasty new business in 1975.
The experiment worked. The evidence is in the biscuit.
"Everyone depends on Biscuitville," said assistant manager Thelma Richardson of the Patton Street restaurant. "It's been here so long, they depend on us."
Jennings' son, Burney, runs the Burlington, N.C., business, making frequent stops in the company's 58 restaurants across Virginia and North Carolina.
"The restaurant business is a people business," Jennings said at the Patton Street eatery. "You really need to like being around people."
His father, a former flour broker, first opened two bread stores in Burlington and slowly transitioned into making fresh pizzas.
To utilize his six Pizzavilles in the morning, Jennings offered fresh biscuits and a jelly bar.
He opened his first full-time biscuit restaurant on Patton Street in 1975.
To read more of this and other stories, pick up a copy of this week's Star-Tribune on newsstands or subscribe online or by calling 432-2791. A year's subscription, which is just $27 in Danville and Pittsylvania County, also gives you free access to the Star-Tribune's e-edition, an online version of the entire newspaper.