Starkville, Mississippi native Michelle Tehan used a non-traditional business model to go from delivering biscuits she cooked in her home kitchen for customers who placed orders through social media, to selling out hundreds of biscuits daily in her charming storefront located on South Jackson Street – all in less than two year’s time. Known as the Biscuit Lady, she has become something like a folk legend.
Driven by necessity and armed with ingenuity and a great personality, Tehan was able to quit her 8 a.m.-5 p.m. job to make a living doing something she loves and to free up precious time to spend with her children.
“It was a way for me to come back and be a part of my own life,” Tehan said.
The owner of the Biscuit Shop said the business was first conceptualized as a way to provide for the increased expense of having her 7-year-old triplets and her 5-year-old home for the summer for the first time.
“You’re going to have to pay a baby sitter, and the grocery bill is going to go through the roof,” Tehan said. “I had to find a way to make extra money outside of my regular budget, and the only way to do that, for me, was baking.”
According to Tehan, she utilized social media to post offers on swap pages for her biscuits. 
“I posted one day on one of the swap pages, ‘Hey I’m making buttermilk biscuits this weekend if anybody would like to order some.’ I did them for like two dollars a half dozen,” Tehan recalled.
Tehan was shocked at the number of people that showed up at her house that weekend to pick up the biscuits they ordered, and the rest was history.
Eric Hill, program manager of MSU Entrepreneurship Center, said the benefit of small businesses like the Biscuit Shop in a community such as Starkville is the cultural value and inspiration it provides.
“You see someone like the Biscuit Lady who took a very non-traditional path to marketing. Rather than just going and getting a loan and a building – and that being the first time she ever sells a biscuit – she built this cult following that followed her from her home kitchen to her location that still sells out daily,” Hill said. “Just as people root for underdogs in sports, I see that a lot in small business… the impact that the aggregate sum of all the small businesses across the country has is that it inspires people to do things that they otherwise might not have.”
Jennifer Potter, senior interior design major, is a long-time regular customer who said the biscuits are what make Tehan’s business so successful. Potter was initially drawn to the Biscuit Lady by a picture she saw on Instagram one morning. They looked so good, and when she found out the biscuits could be delivered, Potter just had to try the delicious breakfast treats. The quality of the product is what keeps Potter coming back to the storefront for more in the post-delivery era of the business.
“It’s kind of addicting. Once you have one, you have to have another,” Potter said. “It’s delicious. Why would you go to get some processed biscuit from McDonalds when you could get something that’s homemade?”
Potter said the peaches biscuit is her favorite, but she always gets one sweet biscuit and one with meat and cheese. This unique breakfast option filled a niche that was badly needed in the Starkville market, according to Potter.
Tehan wants her customers to know they must get to the store early if they want to get the variety of biscuits they are looking for.
“It’s me. I’m one person. And if I made 1,500 biscuits that day, I literally hand made and cut out 1,500 biscuits that day. So, at some point, I have to say no more,”  Tehan said. “When we are out, we are out.”
Tehan said she would like to see the business expand, but it is not currently practical. Because she hand-makes each biscuit herself in the small kitchen of a 1930s shotgun house, expansion would compromise the quaint  Southern atmosphere of her current setup.
Potter said first-time customers should come early, come hungry and prepare to be satisfied.
“In the end, you’re going to be happy,” Potter said. “You’re going to be full, and you’re probably going to want to go back for more.”