All The Facts About Church's Texas Chicken Honey-Butter Biscuits
If you're a biscuit fan, you've likely tried Church's Chicken Honey-Butter Biscuits. Church's Chicken announced a name change in 2022 to become Church's Texas Chicken, but its Honey-Butter Biscuits are the same ones you've grown to love (via Restaurant Business). This epic buttermilk biscuit balances savory with sweet and soft with crunchy to deliver a flavor and texture experience like no other. Once you get past its crunchy, sweet honey-butter exterior, you're met with a soft, flavorful biscuit interior that melts in your mouth. These dessert-like biscuits are so popular that you can buy them in a six-pack, whether you're eating chicken with them or not.
Jennifer Chasteen, who was vice president of Brand Strategy & Activation in 2019, said in PR Newswire, "Our signature Honey-Butter Biscuit is the gift that keeps on giving as a platform for unique new product innovation." Since 2014, the company has been using the biscuits and its batter for everything from desserts to biscuit-batter-covered chicken tenders. And plenty of home cooks have tried their hand with copycat recipes when they've craved these gooey, yet crunchy and soft biscuits. With so much love for Church's Texas Chicken Honey-Butter Biscuits, we've collected a wealth of knowledge for the long-time fan and the biscuit curious.
Honey-Butter Biscuits weren't on the original Church's menu
If you picked up chicken from the original Church's Fried Chicken To-Go back in 1952, your chicken meal would have come with a roll instead of a hot buttered biscuit. In fact, those are the only two items you could initially get: fried chicken and rolls. In 1955, the Texas-based chicken restaurant expanded its menu ever so slightly by adding french fries and jalapeños (via My San Antonio).
Church's Chicken was purchased in 1989 by the founder of Popeyes, but after a bankruptcy filing in 1991, the two emerged under the corporate name America's Favorite Chicken Company (via Company Histories). So when Hala Moddelmog became vice president of marketing at Church's Chicken in 1993, her goal was to revitalize the restaurant's image to make it profitable. Among the first things that she did was change the logo and restaurant decor, per Company Histories. When she became president in 1995, she also insisted on adding Honey-Butter Biscuits to the menu. Every restaurant got new ovens so employees could make biscuits fresh for customers throughout the day. Honey-Butter Biscuits were followed in 1999 by other new menu items like mac and cheese, collard greens, and seasoned beans and rice (via Company Histories). Without Moddelmog's brilliant menu innovations, you'd have never experienced the biscuits you now crave.
Church's Honey-Butter Biscuits have evolved over the years
The Honey-Butter Biscuits you get from Church's Texas Chicken now aren't the same size as the ones you could get in the 1990s or the early 2000s. The recipe hasn't changed, but the size of the biscuit has. Believe it or not, the original Honey-Butter Biscuits were smaller. But since so much in the fast food industry has become super-sized, it's not surprising that Church's Texas Chicken felt the need to increase the size of its biscuits. In 2013, Church's announced "a bigger, better biscuit." The biscuits were still soft inside and crunchy-sweet outside, but they became larger, with even more sticky honey butter (via Brand Eating). Today's Church's Honey-Butter Biscuits weigh in at about 62 grams apiece (via Church's).
While the original version was a reasonable-sized side item, the new ones were big enough to nearly be a meal all by themselves. Rob Crews, Church's chief marketing officer at the time of the switch, cited biscuits as one of the top menu items for the restaurant. He said in a news release announcing the change that "the numbers show how much in demand our biscuits are with our customers. In 2012, we prepared and served more than 160 million honey-butter biscuits. There's no doubt that Church's will exceed that number this year with the new biscuits on our menu" (via Restaurant News).
The biscuits originally sold for $0.59 apiece. A decade later, they're $0.69 each (via Fast Food Menu Prices).
Church's Honey-Butter Biscuits pack a lot of calories
As you can imagine, Church's Texas Chicken Honey-Butter Biscuits aren't a low-calorie treat. Since they became bigger and better in the 2010s, they are even more filling. All that sweet and crunchy honey butter on the outside comes at a price. While Church's dinner rolls are listed at 60 calories each, eating a Honey-Butter Biscuit will cost you 230 calories, with 140 of those calories coming from fat (via Church's Texas Chicken).
It's not surprising that a biscuit that derives so much of its flavor from butter has 15 grams of fat per serving -– 8 grams of which are saturated fat. According to Healthline, If you're on a 2,000-calories-a-day low-fat diet, you should be eating no more than 67 grams of fat per day. Eating four of Church's yummy biscuits would put you close to your daily limit. You might want to reconsider chowing down on too many at a time — a six-pack has 1,380 calories and 90 grams of fat — even though they beg for an encore.
They're wildly popular
When Church's Chicken released its gargantuan biscuit in 2013, it also revealed a statistic for how many biscuits it was serving each year. Even before the size increase, the chain was selling about 160 million Honey-Butter Biscuits annually. That statistic shows just how popular Church's biscuits have been. Church's online menu says that its locations continue to "serve millions of biscuits every year because people are head-over-heels in love with them. ... [T]hey don't just 'sell like hotcakes.' They sell like our Honey-Butter Biscuits, which is better." While it's possible to buy just one, you can also buy them in a pack of three or six biscuits.
When you look at reviews for Church's Texas Chicken, its biscuits tend to be one of the top talked-about menu items. One customer who visited said the restaurant has the "best biscuits around," adding that they are melt-in-your-mouth good (via Google).
It doesn't cost much to buy them in bulk
Every combo meal at Church's Texas Chicken comes with one Honey-Butter Biscuit. Family meals include even more. The eight-piece meal comes with four biscuits, the 12-piece meal comes with six, and the 16-piece meal comes with eight. So, that's one biscuit for every two pieces of chicken. However, if one extra Honey-Butter Biscuit isn't enough for you, you can always buy more from the sides menu (via Church's).
If you just want one Honey-Butter Biscuit, you will pay $0.69 (note that prices may be different at some locations). However, Church's biscuits are popular enough that they sell them in bulk, so go ahead and fill your craving with more. A three-pack costs $1.79, while a six-pack costs $2.99 (via Fast Food Menu Prices). You're getting a pretty good deal if you buy them in bulk since buying more gives you a discount. Each biscuit in the three-pack only costs $0.60, while each biscuit in the six-packet only costs $0.50. However, don't think you can buy a bunch to keep in your fridge to eat throughout the week and have them taste as fresh. They're not that great once they get cold. Many customers say it's best to eat them when you get them, lest they turn into "hockey pucks" (via Facebook).
Made from scratch daily, Church's Honey-Butter Biscuits should theoretically always be fresh
The very nature of a biscuit coated in honey butter requires that you eat it while it's hot and fresh for maximum inner softness and outer crunch. Eventually, the honey butter on the top transforms from its delightfully crunchy texture into something hard and unappealing. To overcome the obstacle of selling its customers stale biscuits, Church's Texas Chicken makes biscuits at each store from scratch several times a day. Making them throughout the day gives customers the best possibility for getting biscuits that are soft and fluffy on the inside and sweet and crunchy on the outside.
Unfortunately, Church's doesn't always sell its biscuits when they're fresh enough or customers don't always get them home quickly enough to eat. As a result, getting hard biscuits is one of the top complaints among Church's reviewers. Even in Church's hometown of San Antonio, hard biscuits can be a problem. One customer was told everything was being made fresh for her, so she said she waited 10 minutes for her order and drove three minutes home to eat, only to find a "rock-hard" biscuit (via Google). So, getting soft biscuits from Church's Texas Chicken can be hit or miss sometimes.
Church's Honey-Butter Biscuits compare favorably with biscuits from other fast-food restaurants
Everyone has different tastes when it comes to biscuits, so deciding who has the best biscuits in the fast food business can be somewhat subjective. However, Church's Honey-Butter Biscuits tend to be recognized as being among the best. When food writer Matthew Wilson from Business Insider tried five fast-food restaurant biscuits in 2020, he found Church's Honey-Butter Biscuits yielded a confusing experience since the hard outer shell contrasts so much with its soft and fluffy inside. However, he declared Church's biscuit the most flavorful and sweetest of the ones he tried. He said that it was one of the cheapest biscuits, but it was also the smallest biscuit in his sampling. Ultimately, he declared KFC's biscuits to be the best, but not everyone agrees.
Customers responded to Wilson's fast-food biscuit review on Reddit with their own favorites, most disagreeing with the idea that KFC had the best. One Reddit commenter said, "Church's has the best biscuit. Nothing else is great there, but [I] will stop in just for a biscuit." Several people liked that comment. Ultimately, you'll have to try the biscuits for yourself to decide whether they're your favorite or not.
You can sometimes get Church's Honey-Butter Biscuits free
At $0.69 each, Church's Honey-Butter Biscuits are absurdly cheap. There's not much you can find on any restaurant menu for under $1 anymore. But sometimes you can even get them free, so keep your eyes open. In 2015, Church's Chicken celebrated National Buttermilk Biscuit Day by offering free Honey-Butter Biscuits. All you had to do was order literally anything else from the menu to get one free Honey-Butter Biscuit from Church's. You could even order a six-pack of biscuits and get one extra biscuit free (via PR Newswire). It was a one-day-only deal, and it was available only at participating restaurants (via Food Beast).
The date for National Buttermilk Biscuit Day is May 14 -– not to be confused with National Biscuit Day, which is May 29. If you can't find free biscuits at Church's on the next Buttermilk Biscuit Day, you can still celebrate with the $0.69 version, which is pretty cheap anyway.
With plenty of copycat recipes, you can make your own Honey-Butter Biscuits at home
The internet is full of fast food copycat recipes. With Church's calling its Honey-Butter Biscuits "crave-worthy," it's only natural to find dozens of copycat recipes. Church's Texas Chicken doesn't divulge the biscuits' ingredients online, but it does indicate they contain dairy, soy, and wheat. The dairy likely comes from butter, milk, and/or buttermilk, while the soy could conceivably come from vegetable shortening or margarine. The ingredients that most copycat recipes have in common for the biscuit are flour, baking powder, cream of tartar, sugar, and salt. Some of the recipes call for cold butter, while others use vegetable shorting or a combination of the two. Whole milk is almost always an ingredient, but some home cooks choose buttermilk instead. Since there's no baking soda that needs activation in most copycat recipes, the cream of tartar likely gives the biscuits a tangy flavor instead of buttermilk (per Insider). Church's might use buttermilk since it occasionally celebrates National Buttermilk Biscuit Day (via PR Newswire).
After rolling the biscuits into balls, brushing them with butter, and baking them at 450 degrees Fahrenheit, YouTube channel Simply Mamá Cooks recommends brushing on a layer of honey, returning the biscuits to the oven for a minute, giving them an additional layer of a melted butter and honey mixture, and baking them again for another minute. Now you know the secret. There are extra layers of honey and butter baked on the biscuit.
Oreo Biscuit Bites were Church's first Honey-Butter Biscuit experiment
Plenty of restaurants have thought to add Oreo cookies to treats like ice cream or cheesecake to create new types of desserts, but it's rare to use them to turn a side item into a dessert. Yet, Church's Chicken did just that when it decided to add Oreos to its biscuit batter to create a mini biscuit and drizzle it with vanilla icing. Oreo Biscuit Bites were available for a limited time in December 2014 (via First We Feast).
According to an interview at the time with Church's chief marketing officer, Mark Snyder, the creation of Oreo Biscuit Bites was the first time in the company's history that the restaurant had experimented with its original Honey-Butter Biscuit recipe. After all, he said, the biscuits are "core and central to the DNA of Church's" (via USA Today). However, since the experiment was a success, it certainly wasn't the last time Church's Chicken used its biscuits as the basis for menu experiments. Since then, the restaurant chain has tried adding the biscuit batter to chicken tenders and making other desserts with Honey-Butter Biscuits as the base.
Church's Honey-Butter Biscuit Tenders have been a repeat hit
Church's decided to capitalize on the success of its Honey-Butter Biscuits and tasty fried chicken by using the batter from its biscuits on its chicken fingers. Church's Honey-Butter Biscuit Tenders first arrived on the scene in the spring of 2016. Each extra-large chicken tender was slathered with Honey-Butter Biscuit batter and then fried until golden buttery brown (via Houston Chronicle). Jennifer Chasteen, Church's vice president of brand strategy and activation at the time, said, "Honey-Butter Biscuit Tenders are easily one of our all-time most popular and crave-worthy product innovations. Guests tell us that it really is hard to beat our best thing, coated in our other best thing" (via Restaurant News).
Unfortunately, these chicken fingers disappeared from the menu as quickly as they arrived, much to the disappointment of fans. Nothing brings people back to a restaurant like the return of a beloved menu item that has been withheld for a while. So, people flocked back to satisfy their craving in the fall of 2018, when Church's revived Honey-Butter Biscuit Tenders. Not surprisingly, they were only available for a limited time (via Restaurant News). After all, restaurants have to have a trick to pull out of their hats when they want to boost sales. The biscuit-battered tenders re-emerged again a year later in the fall of 2019 (via PR Newswire), so keep your eyes open for the next return since it's surely forthcoming.
Church's sometimes uses its Honey-Butter Biscuits as a base for peach cobbler
One of Church's repeat Honey-Butter Biscuit dessert experiments has been to use it as the base for peach cobbler. It first showed up in the summer of 2019 and made a reappearance on the menu in the summer of 2022. It may have even been more popular if you could have gotten it with vanilla ice cream on top.
A single Church's Honey-Butter Biscuit starts at 230 calories, but when you add spiced peach pie filling to the top, it increases to a 370-calorie dessert. When Church's first introduced peach cobbler to the menu, it was only $1.99 (via Chew Boom). However, when it was on the menu in 2022, it was $2.79 (via Brand Eating). Even with a price increase, it still won't break your bank account even if it ends up breaking your calorie quota for the day. And if peach cobbler doesn't fulfill your need for summer peaches, you may be lucky enough to find Peach Perfect Tea and Peach Perfect Lemonade on the Church's menu at the same time.
Church's Frosted Honey-Butter Biscuits used to be a secret menu item
When Church's put its Honey-Butter Biscuit Tenders back on the menu in 2019, it also brought out something new: Frosted Honey-Butter Biscuits. This dish was initially created by employees who hacked the menu by using the vanilla icing from Church's apple pie to turn the honey-buttered biscuits into a dessert. In fact, it has been the first secret menu item turned official for the restaurant (via PR Newswire).
Church's sticky-sweet biscuits already might as well be dessert. But there was no denying the dessert status of Frosted Honey-Butter Biscuits when they came on the scene. They looked more like cinnamon rolls than biscuits with all the white icing crisscrossed on top. There was so much icing on top that Church's thought it best to serve them in a cup, like one of its regular side dishes. At 320 calories each, the frosted version was 90 calories more than a regular honey-buttered biscuit (per Church's). Yet, the icing turned the biscuit into a different dish entirely (via Houston CultureMap).
Although the only difference between these biscuits and the original ones is the icing on top — plus being served in a cup — there is a markup in price. Instead of being $0.69 each, Church's sells the frosted version for $1 apiece or $5 for a six-pack. These Frosted Honey-Butter Biscuits also seem to be a regular menu item now for the chain. What a sweet deal!