A Second Sunrise: A Trip to Louisburg’s Biscuit Kitchen

Reaction poured in on social media last month as smoke billowed from Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen in Chapel Hill.

The drive-thru only restaurant known for its biscuits – and the traffic jam it can cause on some mornings as customers waiting to place their order file onto Franklin Street – has been a mainstay for generations of UNC students and Chapel Hillians alike.

“I’m out and about and sometimes people find out that I own Sunrise, and their face just lights up,” restaurant owner David Allen said, adding that everyone associated with Sunrise appreciated the well wishes from fans on social media as word of the fire spread.

There are other local breakfast choices where you can get a good biscuit, but for those who are eager to scratch their Sunrise itch, there is one solution – it just involves a bit of a drive. A little more than an hour away from University Place in Chapel Hill, you can still get a Sunrise biscuit.

The Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen in Louisburg opened in 1978, six years before the Chapel Hill location was opened. In fact, the Louisburg Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen opened a year after the original location, which was in Henderson. Ownership partners split, and the Henderson and another location in Oxford are now known as Sunrise Biscuit Company.

If you make the trek to Louisburg, you’ll probably run into Janet Patterson — the general manager.

“Most of the people here are repeat customers,” she said on Monday morning at the restaurant, which has a drive-thru and seating. “It’s a small town.”

Patterson knows most of those repeat customers by name, as she talks about family and the happenings of the town of a little more than 3,000 people. She called Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen a “gathering place for the community.”

“We hire a lot of young people, right out of high school or actually still in high school; it’s their first job,” she said. “A lot of the people that live here, their kids have worked here or they worked here. It’s one of those real personal things.”

Whether in Louisburg or Chapel Hill, Patterson said the product is something that can connect small town residents with UNC graduates across the country. When taking her son to an appointment while living in Virginia Beach, Patterson said the orthodontist recognized her as “the biscuit girl” from their time in Chapel Hill.

“Now, I’m the biscuit lady.”

She also invited those from Chapel Hill to make the trip to Louisburg, “so that they can actually come in and sit down and get a feel for the locals and the good food.”

Allen said the Chapel Hill location is working through the process to be able to reopen. Optimistically, he said the Sunrise drive-thru in Chapel Hill could reopen in two weeks, although he said three was more likely.

“We’re fortunate that it happened in the summer because we’re slower now,” said Allen. “But every day that we’re closed just eats my guts up; I don’t like being closed.”

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