Kingsport, clear a spot on your Saturday morning. The Flying Biscuit Café has signed a franchise agreement with Larry and Courtney Bell, a father-and-daughter team bringing the Atlanta-born breakfast and brunch brand to Northeast Tennessee.
It’ll be the first Flying Biscuit in the Tri-Cities and only the second in Tennessee, after Knoxville. Site selection is underway right now — as soon as a lease is signed, we’ll share the address and the opening date.
The quick version
- Who: Larry Bell and Courtney Bell, father and daughter, both franchise owners
- Where: Kingsport, Tennessee — the brand’s first café in the Tri-Cities region
- What: One Flying Biscuit Café, with hopes of more across the region over time
- When: Site selection in progress; address and opening date to come
- Hours, once open: Breakfast and lunch, doors close in the afternoon. No dinner, ever
Neither of them had heard of us. Then they walked in.
That’s the honest origin story here. The Bells weren’t chasing a brand name — they ate, looked around the room, and started asking questions.
“We didn’t know Flying Biscuit before we walked into one. Then we ate, looked around the room, and started asking how to get one to the Tri-Cities,” said Larry Bell. “This is an area that already loves a good brunch, and we’re looking forward to giving people somewhere with a little character to spend their morning.”
Larry brings 37 years of business ownership to the table. He built and ran several companies before turning to restaurants, and he’ll be running this café alongside Courtney — with the corporate team handling the parts nobody should have to figure out alone: site selection, buildout, training, the playbook.
What sealed it was the model itself. A full breakfast and lunch business that closes in the afternoon. No dinner rush, no late-night labor. Turns out “home by mid-afternoon” is a pretty good pitch for owners, too.
Why Kingsport makes sense
Kingsport is the largest city in the Kingsport–Bristol metro and a cornerstone of the wider Tri-Cities region. It’s home to Eastman Chemical Company, and downtown has been pulling in steady new investment for years now.
Weekend mornings there already draw a crowd. The Bells just think that crowd could use one more place to land.
They’re locals building for their neighbors, and there’s a difference between opening a restaurant in a town and opening one in your town. It usually shows up in the small stuff: who gets hired, who gets remembered, whose kid’s team ends up on the sponsor banner.
What’ll be on the plate
The menu Flying Biscuit is known for, served from morning straight through the lunch hour:
- All-day breakfast, because 2 p.m. is a perfectly reasonable time for eggs
- The award-winning shrimp and creamy dreamy grits
- Stuffed French toast
- Omelets, vegan scrambles, burgers, and wraps
- And the biscuits, obviously — baked all morning, still warm when they hit the table
Come as you are — even that version.
More to come
The Bells aren’t stopping at one. Beyond this first café, they’re hoping to open additional Flying Biscuit locations around the region over time.
They’re joining a brand that’s been at this since 1993, when the first Flying Biscuit opened in Atlanta’s Candler Park neighborhood. Thirty-plus years later: 43 locations open and 11 more in development across Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, and Texas. Tens of thousands of biscuits a week.
Congratulations, Larry and Courtney
Signing the agreement is the exciting part — and the good stuff starts now. Picking the corner. Drawing up the room. Hiring a crew. Eventually, learning which regular takes their grits with extra pepper. Larry has spent decades building businesses, Courtney is building this one right alongside him, and they already know the kind of morning they want people to have here.
Kingsport, you’re getting a good one. And you’re getting it from neighbors, which is the whole point.
We’ll share the address and the opening date as soon as there’s one to share. Until then: congratulations to Larry and Courtney, and save room for the grits.
Some of our owners are in the dining room every morning. Others put a strong GM in place and stay close to the numbers instead of the griddle. Both work — and either way, the doors close in the afternoon.
If you’re curious what a Flying Biscuit could look like in your market, fill out our contact form and Andrew will be in touch.
