A new Biscuitville restaurant is slated to open later this month in a fast-growing business corridor of Rocky Mount near U.S. 64.

The restaurant, which is known for its homemade biscuit sandwiches and Southern-style breakfasts, is tentatively slated to open at 21 Progress Drive on March 28 or 29, said Kellie Hicks, the director of marketing for Biscuitville.

“We’ll do a walk-through of the (new restaurant) on March 25,” she said.

If the restaurant isn’t quite ready to open on March 28 or 29, it will open soon thereafter, she said.

Biscuitville is regional chain with restaurants in North Carolina and Virginia. The Rocky Mount location will be its 58th restaurant.

Every 20 minutes, the biscuits are made behind a window in front of the customers.

The restaurant serves up a wide range of biscuit sandwiches with country ham, steak and chicken.

“(The biscuits) are made from scratch the old-fashioned way,” Hicks said.

“They are made with 100 percent vegetable shortening and flour and buttermilk, like the way grandma made them. We do not use a biscuit mix,” Hicks said.

Hicks said she did not expect Biscuitville to be a major competitor with the nearby Cracker Barrel restaurant at 238 Enterprise Drive.

Based on a recent consumer survey, the restaurant is more of a competitor with fast-food restaurants like Hardee’s and McDonald’s, Hicks said.

Hicks said it has been a pleasure working with city officials to get the restaurant open.

“It has been very well received by everyone there,” she said. “We’re looking forward to opening.”

The seeds for Biscuitville were planted in 1966.

According to the company’s Web page, Mountainbrook Fresh Bread & Milk is where it all began. Maurice Jennings, a former flour broker, opened two bread stores in Burlington.

While operating the bread stores, he decided to give making fresh pizzas a shot.

“There was a demand for take-out pizza,” the Web page states. “Carrying on the fresh theme made perfect sense. Thus, ‘Pizza-To-Go’ was born.”

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 ?EUR? It wasn’t long before the made-from-scratch biscuits were outselling pizza,” the Web page states. In 1975, Jennings 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 page states. “The boom included a sweeping conversion of all the Pizzavilles into Biscuitvilles, as well as, the opening of brand new Biscuitvilles.”