Kathryn Jackson spent two years building a following for her buttermilk biscuits at Milwaukee farmers markets, and now she's ready to give them a permanent home. Jackson, owner of Buttah & Biscuit, plans to open a brick-and-mortar shop by the end of 2026 at 184 S. 2nd St. in Walker's Point, taking over the space where Full of Beans Café served customers for nearly a decade before closing this past July.
Jackson has run Buttah & Biscuit as a market stand since 2024, selling sweet and savory Southern-style biscuits at the South Shore and Shorewood farmers markets, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She told the paper that opening a storefront felt overdue in a city where good biscuits can be hard to come by. “It's really hard to get a good biscuit in Milwaukee,” Jackson said.
The new shop will give Milwaukee something it hasn't had: year-round access to Buttah & Biscuit's menu, rather than just the roughly five months a year the farmers markets run. The lineup is expected to include cheddar and chive, mozzarella-basil, rosemary-goat cheese, lemon-blueberry, and classic buttermilk biscuits, per the same report. Jackson described the format as something like a doughnut shop, with six to eight biscuit varieties in the case at any given time and customers able to build their own custom packs.
A Menu Built Around Rotation and Indulgence
Sweet options will rotate too, with two to three sweet biscuit varieties available each day. The shop also plans to carry premium biscuits such as prosciutto, gouda, and green onion, and Jackson has floated the idea of weekends-only Southern-style biscuits and gravy to-go specials, since the dish was already a hit at the farmers markets, the Journal Sentinel reported.
Jackson's path to the biscuit case wasn't a straight line. She studied finance at Tuskegee University in Alabama, then lived in North and South Carolina for nearly a decade before returning to her hometown of Milwaukee in 2019. According to her company's own account, she discovered a passion for scratch-baking during the 2020 pandemic and enrolled in the pastry program at Milwaukee Area Technical College in 2021 to pursue a Technical Baking Diploma, eventually launching Buttah & Biscuit in 2024. MATC's Baking Production diploma program builds in coursework on food safety sanitation, basic baking techniques, and ingredient functions, training meant to prepare students for commercial bakery operations.
That formal training shows up in how the shop plans to keep operating even as it scales up. Buttah & Biscuit makes everything from scratch in batches of 20 biscuits, and the business intends to preserve its hand-folding, rolling, and cutting process rather than shift to automation. Per the company's own description of its approach, it uses real butter and buttermilk and avoids automated conveyor belts in favor of small, hand-finished batches — a method Jackson has said blends Southern culinary traditions with Midwestern ingredients.
Moving Into a Piece of Walker's Point History
The address Jackson is taking over carries its own backstory. Commercial listings show 184 S. 2nd St. sits within the Mabbett & Breeds Block, a two-story Italianate structure built in 1858 by Milwaukee timber merchants Hiram Mabbett and Charles Breed, according to LoopNet, known today for its arched storefronts and exposed brick façade. Full of Beans Café operated in the 1,200-square-foot unit for nearly ten years before owners Rob and JoAnn Hausknecht held their final service in July and retired, as Urban Milwaukee reported, citing rising operating expenses alongside the couple's retirement after nearly six decades of combined industry experience.
That closure wasn't an isolated event. Hoodline previously reported that Full of Beans' exit was part of a string of recent restaurant departures along South 2nd Street, which also included Cute Robot Japanese Kitchen and Fixture Pizza Pub, with several small food venues in the area facing pressure from rising expenses or tax liabilities. Buttah & Biscuit's move into the space marks a new chapter for a stretch of Walker's Point that has seen considerable turnover.
Keeping the Market Feel Alive
Jackson isn't stepping away from the farmers market circuit just yet. Buttah & Biscuit plans to keep attending the South Shore Farmers Market every Saturday through October 31, and the business is also set to appear at the Milwaukee Public Market's Harvest Festival on October 10, per the Journal Sentinel. This year the brand also expanded into downtown Milwaukee's open-air MKE Night Market along West Wisconsin Avenue, a sign of its growing public profile beyond weekend neighborhood markets.
Once the storefront opens, Jackson plans to run it Thursday through Sunday, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. She said she wants the shop to carry over the casual, grab-and-go spirit of the markets. “We're going to keep that farmers market feel, where you can grab your biscuits and enjoy one now, or take some for later,” Jackson said. She's also framed the biscuit itself as something that deserves more attention in Milwaukee than it typically gets, noting that in the South, “biscuits are so commonplace there, basically like a dinner roll.”
The venture also lands amid steady demand for the trade broadly. MATC figures published in March 2026 show more than 1,600 commercial bakers working across the Milwaukee area, earning a median hourly wage of $18.00, with regional employment projections pointing to continued demand for specialty bakery products. For Jackson, that backdrop and a storefront in a historic Walker's Point building mark the next step for a business that started with folding dough by hand at a lakefront market stand.
