We have opened a lot of Biscuit Belly locations. Every time, there’s a moment somewhere in the week before a grand opening where a city stops feeling like a work trip and starts feeling like somewhere I’d actually want to live.
Peachtree City did that to me in about 48 hours. And it did it via golf cart.
Here’s the thing about Peachtree City that many don’t know: the whole city runs on golf carts. There are paths everywhere. People commute on them, run errands on them, live their entire lives on them. It’s like someone said, “What if a neighborhood, but make it delightful,” and then actually built it.
I’d been attending the training week there in Peachtree City, and somewhere along the way, a complete stranger offered us their golf cart. Just like that. “You can use it for whatever you need.”
Reader, I used it for everything I needed.
I loaded up biscuits and drove them all around town. I navigated the cart paths like I’d been doing it for years (I had not). I almost hit two deer. Two. At separate times. I did marketing to the GOLF CART PICKUP LINE at an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, and I came home and told Chad we need to go back. Not for work. Just to go back.
That’s the Peachtree City effect, and honestly, it might be the best endorsement I can give a city: I showed up as a business owner and left as someone low-key planning a return trip.
But here’s what I keep thinking about – that stranger who just handed over their cart. No hesitation. No “well, what do you need it for?” Just generosity, offered freely to someone they’d never met who was clearly running around their city on a mission involving biscuits.
That’s hospitality. Real hospitality. The kind we talk about at Biscuit Belly all the time – the kind that doesn’t wait for a reason or a title or a perfect moment. It just shows up and says, “Here, take the cart.”
We’re trying to build restaurants that feel the way that golf cart moment felt. Where people walk in as strangers and leave feeling like the city just handed them something warm.
Peachtree City, we came to feed you. Turns out you fed us first.
Come see us. We’re at The Avenue, and we’ll be the ones still talking about the deer.
Lauren Coulter, Chief Biscuit Eater