The Popular Restaurant Chain That Makes Fresh Biscuits Daily

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Buttermilk biscuits are one of the most classic Southern foods, an example of the regional cuisine that's also given us traditional favorites like fried chicken, pulled pork, and creamy banana pudding. You'll find the tender, flaky biscuits on the menu at different Southern-style fast-food and restaurant chains, including at Cracker Barrel, where they're handmade fresh daily. The popular restaurant claims it serves more than 210 million of them each year, or 825,000 a day.

According to employees on Reddit, the process begins by blending buttermilk with a dry mix of wheat flour, soybean oil, leavening, and salt. Sometimes bakers a little extra baking powder for lift. The workers use specialized rolling pins and cutters, baking the biscuits in an oven reserved solely for them before brushing the tops with liquid margarine. For those who want to make them at home, Cracker Barrel sells a Biscuit and Dumpling Mix that only requires adding water.

These biscuits star in two signature breakfast dishes: the Biscuit Breakfast, which sandwiches bacon, sausage, or ham, and Biscuits & Gravy, smothered in the chain's creamy gravy made with pork, black pepper, and salt. They are also served alongside most egg dishes and lunch or dinner platters, though they can be ordered separately with optional butter, fruit jelly, or apple butter. Biscuit Beignets are available as a sweet version, which are the same dough fried instead of baked, and lightly coated with cinnamon sugar.

Cracker Barrel has served buttermilk biscuits from the very start, when Dan Evins opened the first Southern country-style restaurant in Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1969. They'd always been made fresh on-site daily. But customers began noticing a change in 2025.

One diner wrote on Facebook that upon being served biscuits that felt "cold to the touch," the manager came by and stated that "corporate does not allow [Cracker Barrel] to make fresh biscuits anymore." Instead, biscuits were now "made in advance, placed off to the side, and simply reheated as needed." But after enough patrons complained, Cracker Barrel reversed course in September. The chain announced on social media that it had heard the negative feedback and "took it to heart," promising that, from then on, the biscuits would be "rolled by hand and baked fresh throughout the day."

Interestingly, this decision coincided with Cracker Barrel reversing changes to its logo. Amid a fierce customer backlash, the company ultimately abandoned its plans to revamp the restaurants with a more modern look.