In the last episode of How She Rolls, the PBS series that documents a year in the life of Callie's Hot Little Biscuit owner Carrie Morey, a slide pops up briefly on a big inflatable outdoor movie screen during an end-of-year party for the company's employees. Because of Covid, the party is actually a drive-in movie, so everyone can enjoy the entertainment safely in their cars while Morey hand-delivers swag bags, cake pops, and bags of popcorn.

The scene is heartwarming and does a lot to convey how Morey treats her staff and takes care of others. But that brief graphic that pops up on the movie screen—which I had to freeze to see more closely—is what tells the big story. The stats are astounding.

Unable to load media id=518

In 2019, the Charleston-based biscuit company used 89,840 lbs. of flour, 19,320 lbs. of butter, and 511 cases of cream cheese to sell 1,956,192 biscuits and fulfill orders from 15,000 grocers, 5,000 Goldbelly customers, 13,272 direct online customers, and 475 specialty retailers.

That's nearly 2 million handmade biscuits sold in one year. But if Morey has anything to say about it, she's just getting started. In that same episode, business consultants she's brought in to help her figure out how to take her company to the next stage promise that before long she'll be selling 10 million biscuits a year and own the biscuit space.

For Morey, her slow and steady growth so far has been a function of her more creative approach to business. She says she's the type to build the plane as she's flying it.

"Fifteen years ago, I started this business as an online mail-order business only, when exactly no one was buying food online," she laughs.

And now she has four Hot Little Biscuit stores (one each in Atlanta and Charlotte and two in Charleston), a catering division, robust online sales, and a fast-growing wholesale operation. Oh, and she just released her second cookbook — Hot Little Suppers. She's done all this in the midst of raising three children, cooking dinner seemingly every night, and navigating a global pandemic.

An episode of the show documents the cookbook-making process, from planning and testing recipes to a cover photo shoot. In one scene, Morey is on the floor of her office with maybe 100 color-coded post-it notes, each containing a recipe that corresponds to a season. She's obviously overwhelmed and unsure how to edit herself. Her publicist walks in and immediately tells her to stop what she's doing and focus on the recipes that tell the best stories.

She obviously listened to that wise advice, because the resulting cookbook is full of her favorite dishes with accompanying stories that explain the recipe's significance to her and her family. The recipes are organized by season and live up to the subtitle: simple recipes to feed family and friends. She includes both easy weeknight meals and more involved weekend fare along with cocktails, desserts, and hot little tips and hot little extras (you better believe her hot little biscuit branding is on point).

Her favorite recipe story is for Italian Wedding Soup. During a rare snow day in Charleston, she was looking for something to make and suggested to her three daughters Italian Wedding Soup. "They didn't know what it was, so I explained it to them," she says.

And the next thing you know, "They had concocted an entire neighborhood wedding with handwritten invitations and plans to make a scratch wedding cake and costumes and invited the whole neighborhood," she says. "It was magical, and we dressed up and wore crazy gowns. That's why I love food so much, it brings people together and creates memories."

The cookbook not only has a recipe for her signature buttermilk biscuits but also one for biscuit crackers, a recipe she concocted as a way to use up leftover dough. They tested selling the crackers online last summer and were met with great success. It's being launched as a new product soon. You can also expect to see other experiments. Recently, they've been working on a monkey bread recipe that sounds promising—and delicious.

Should you get a chance to attend one of Morey’s cookbook appearances, which she'll be doing around the country in the coming weeks, you can expect to be regaled with stories and fed too, because that's how she rolls. (Sorry, I couldn't help myself.)

In Charleston, she’ll be hosting a collaborative four-course dinner with Chef Nathan Hood at the Post House Inn this coming Tuesday, October 26 and appearing with cookbook author Matt Lee for biscuits, beverages, and books on Wednesday, November 3 at 5 p.m. at Blue Bicycle Books at 420 King St. On November 14th she’ll be heading up to Highlands, North Carolina, for the Highlands Wine & Food Festival. The full scheduled for her tour around the South is available on the Callie’s Biscuits website.