FMBGN-Mom's Home Cooking - Homemade Happiness On FMB

The best comfort food doesn’t just fill you up, it reminds you why a town feels like home. We’re posted up at Mom’s Home Cooking on Fort Myers Beach with owner Heather Reagan, who also created the beloved Heavenly Biscuit, and she tells the real story behind “homemade.” From cinnamon rolls and biscuits to scratch-made lunch specials, Heather explains why quality ingredients are the only way to deliver food that people remember and come back for.

We also talk about the long road after the storms and what rebuilding looks like in practice: operating out of a trailer, dealing with higher insurance and overhead, and hunting for the right space to bring the business back into a building. Heather shares what she misses most about the original setup, including the community traditions that grew over the years, and why she still believes the next chapter can be even better.

If you’re visiting Fort Myers Beach or you live here and want a local restaurant that feels personal, Heather drops must-try menu picks beyond the cinnamon rolls, including biscuit sandwiches, a classic Cuban with house-roasted pork, a cheesesteak that earns serious praise, and smoked-chicken chicken salad. We also cover where to find Mom’s Home Cooking on Estero Boulevard and the current hours. Subscribe for more Fort Myers Beach local business stories, share this with a friend who loves great food, and leave a review so more neighbors can find the show.

Mom’s Home Cookin / Heavenly Biscuit
Heather Reagan
2450 Estero Blvd, Fort Myers Beach, FL 33931
(239) 785-0707
moms-restaurant-fortmyersbeach.com

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Transcript

Sunshine-Only Welcome

Intro/Close 0:00

Welcome to the Fort Myers Beach Good Neighbor Podcast. No shade, just sunshine, drama-free, positive vibes only. Each episode bring you closer to the neighbors, local legends and businesses, that's more the local community and make Fort Myers Beach displays paradise and build up. Want to send out some island love to, State insurance Snug Harbor, Nervous Nellie's, and the Alex King group. They're the good neighbors and businesses that allow us to share the soul of our community with every listener. We'll have a beach chair, grab a drink, and let's be the people who make this island feel at home. Here's your host, Cabo Jim Schaller.

"Cabo" Jim 0:31

Welcome,

Meet Heather At Mom’s Home Cooking

"Cabo" Jim 0:32

Fort Myers Beach, good neighbors, to another episode. Today we're at Mom's Home Cooking here on Fort Myers Beach with Heather Reagan, the owner, and uh heavenly biscuit as well. As well, yes. So, for those who aren't, and I don't know who would be not familiar with what you do, can you share a little bit about what you do?

Heather Reagan 0:50

We make people happy.

"Cabo" Jim 0:51

That's a good thing.

Heather Reagan 0:53

One tummy at a time, is what I'm like to say. Well, you've eaten here. That's high. We do homemade cinnamon rolls, biscuits. Everything we do is really super high quality. I truly believe that you cannot make a quality product without quality ingredients. So you can't go substandard.

Quality Ingredients And Creative Specials

Heather Reagan 1:10

You gotta have the best that make the best.

"Cabo" Jim 1:12

It makes sense, right? Nowadays or something.

Heather Reagan 1:17

And the nice, the nice thing about right now, this time of year, is especially being in the trailer, we're out of space when we're really busy. Yep. So I don't have the space to make those cakes and the meatloaf and the shrimp and grits and the stuff like that that we run as a special. So now that it's quieted down a little bit more, but it's not completely dead, we're able to go in and the other day I made a vanilla cake with all kinds of berries and vanilla butter cream. Today we had the chocolate brownies with the peanut butter icing. And we did peach rolls the other day, very berry rolls, so just meatloaf. It's just kind of fun to mess around.

"Cabo" Jim 1:55

I love it. So let's back up your story a little bit. How did you get involved in all of this?

From Atlanta To Beach Life

Heather Reagan 2:04

Well, I came from Atlanta in 2001, and I opened the Heavenly Biscuit in July, and it had just gotten too busy there, too much traffic, too much smog, and I really wanted to live at the beach. And so I looked all over. I looked in Mexico, I looked in Costa Rica, I looked in Florida, all over Florida, and then I filmed Fort Myers Beach and the rest is history. You fell in love with it before just like everybody else that comes over the bridge.

"Cabo" Jim 2:33

And when was that?

Heather Reagan 2:34

Uh that was probably in '99.

"Cabo" Jim 2:37

Okay.

Heather Reagan 2:37

Yeah, because I said I was here within a year. All right. After I made this decision to come full time. So you've been here for quite a while. Quite a while. And happy to be here, happy to be a part of the community. I love the people here. It's been a lot of fun.

"Cabo" Jim 2:50

So I always like to ask my my guests, you know, we've all been through

Rebuilding After Storms In A Trailer

"Cabo" Jim 2:55

challenges. Uh-huh. Storms, you know, which has been a big challenge. How is that set apart what you're doing now? Can you look back now and say, you know what, I've learned something from that and moving forward? I know everything forward.

Heather Reagan 3:07

We're always moving forward. The the storms have given us a good opportunity to expand our business where there wasn't the opportunity or the space on the island before. We can now move a little bit more slowly. You know, we're working with the town, trying to find good fits, you know, places that we can lease, places we can buy, you know, just seeing what's available and what's coming online now. We're almost four years after. Yep. So trying to find some things that are starting to come back.

"Cabo" Jim 3:35

So you're operating out of a trailer now, right? And the goal is to be back in a building.

Heather Reagan 3:41

A lot of people think that being in the trailer, we have um less overhead is actually more overhead than we had before. And um, of course, insurance is a different ball game, and it's quite a bit higher. But what we're really missing is our grow wall where we put all the kids on it as they grew up through the years, and then those kids would come and bring their kids and put them on there. So I really miss that, and I miss our display case because people would come in and just be like, Oh wow, we'll take one of everything.

"Cabo" Jim 4:13

Exactly.

Heather Reagan 4:14

I want that or and what was nice about that is instead of having to come in and buy like one big piece of cake, you could get little pieces, and so you didn't have to just choose one.

"Cabo" Jim 4:24

Yeah, I know.

Heather Reagan 4:25

I know you get everything you possibly could want.

"Cabo" Jim 4:28

And you're down the street about from where it used to be .

Heather Reagan 4:31

Well, mom's was right here, and Heavenly Biscuit was up one block and on the right. Yep, on the north side.

"Cabo" Jim 4:37

I see you've got a beautiful view.

Heather Reagan 4:38

You cannot beat it, and the parking is great. The parking's good and the view's good, and ideally for the future, my goal is to be right here. Right. So let it not be said that it is it is out there, right here. Great parking, right here. Great parking, great view, good location for everybody, kind of in the middle of the north and the south. Right.

"Cabo" Jim 5:01

So we're gonna be able to look back and say.

Heather Reagan 5:04

We were sitting right where right where your kitchen is. Right. This is actually the where the uh we're sitting where the aisle was. Where we people would walk to the aisle to go to the kitchen or go to the dining room or look at the uh right behind you it would be where the case was that had all the cakes and everything.

"Cabo" Jim 5:21

Now you're making me hungry.

Heather Reagan 5:23

Well, thank you for uh telling me to go try Detroit dawgs. We did, it was great.

"Cabo" Jim 5:27

They were good, they're great people.

Heather Reagan 5:29

Yeah, they really are nice. They were really sweet to us.

"Cabo" Jim 5:31

They make a version of Chicago dogs and they called it Chicabo.

Heather Reagan 5:34

Oh, yeah.

"Cabo" Jim 5:37

Oh

Supporting Local Restaurants On Days Off

"Cabo" Jim 5:38

owning a business can be very demanding in your time, right? When you do get a moment of free time, what do you enjoy doing? Besides cooking. I knew you could say that.

Heather Reagan 5:52

I do cook at home, but um, I actually really enjoy checking out new restaurants that are coming on into the market and uh just seeing what they have to offer. And so we go out once a week and we do that, and uh otherwise it's just mainly keeping our head down and working really hard and putting every dime away. Yeah, that's so that's a little Sunday go-out is really fun for us. We enjoy it, and you know, like like I said, we went the other day, we went to Detroit Dawg, we you know, we've done quite a few restaurants on the beach as well as off the beach.

"Cabo" Jim 6:22

It's important to support those locations.

Heather Reagan 6:24

Yeah, yeah. That's it's well they do it for us, and we would definitely, you know, we definitely would do it back, especially so important, especially now this time of year.

"Cabo" Jim 6:32

Yeah, we can get around and see more people this way, right?

Heather Reagan 6:35

It's kind of like old home week at the end of every season. You go around hugging people. I haven't seen you since last year, even though they're like literally right two blocks away.

"Cabo" Jim 6:45

I'm out of the woodwork a little bit, yeah. Yeah, so for people

Must-Try Menu Picks For First-Timers

"Cabo" Jim 6:50

that first-time visitors, or maybe people that have been here a number of times, what on the menu should they be trying besides the cinnamon rolls? We all know that, right?

Heather Reagan 6:57

Well, of course, the biscuit sandwiches, our lunches are amazing. Anybody who has not been here for lunch, you are missing out. We have a made from scratch cumin. We roast the pork in-house, our ham is that real off-the-bone, like your grandma's Christmas ham. And then so we use that and real high-end cheese, pickles, of course, the mustard. It's a very classic human, nice and crisp. Our frilly cheesesteak, I'll put it up against anybody's. We have is we have some real cheesesteak connoisseurs that come in and say, This is the one. Other than all, yes, this is the one, and uh our chicken salad. We smoke the chicken and then we make our chicken salad. It's got a little sweetness to it. Nice. So everything is super awesome. Meatloaf is uh meatloaf. I make right right now. We'll probably go to once a week. All right, so we'll do like a meatloaf Thursday or something like that. Don't quote me on that, but you know, call

Hours Location And How To Visit

Heather Reagan 7:54

ahead.

"Cabo" Jim 7:54

There we go. Let's talk about hours. So during the off season, your hours will be different than now.

Heather Reagan 8:01

No, actually, they're the same. Yes, I'm old now. I can't do the hours like I used to. I used to be able to come in at you know three or four o'clock in the morning and go till six or eight at night. Can't do it. Yeah, can't do it, especially with the heat and everything. So what I think once we get it back into a building, it's a little more comfortable, then our hours will extend them, of course, and we'll do some dinners and you know, just a meet and three kind of thing where people come in and they can have some good southern comfort food, which I love doing that, and it's really super easy to throw together, and people just love it.

"Cabo" Jim 8:34

So, how do they find you right now?

Heather Reagan 8:36

Right now, you come to 2450 Estero Boulevard Tuesday through Sunday, 7 30 a.m. I turn the grill off at 12 45 so it can cool down and we close at one o'clock. All right, and then, like I said, once we get back into a building, our hours will become extended. I love it.

"Cabo" Jim 8:51

I love it.

Heather Reagan 8:51

I love it too. I can't wait. Right, we're excited. We're excited about this.

"Cabo" Jim 8:56

Thank you for being on the show.

Heather Reagan 8:57

Well, that was quick and easy. Thanks for having me.

"Cabo" Jim 9:00

Thanks for being the good neighbor, and uh we'll see. Well, thank you for being a good neighborhood.

Heather Reagan 9:03

We'll see you here, and we'll see you here. All right, that's right. Call me ahead, and the meatloaf grilled cheese will knock your socks off.

"Cabo" Jim 9:09

Awesome.

Heather Reagan 9:10

All right, thank you so much. Have a great day. Take

Share The Show And Nominate

Heather Reagan 9:12

care.

Intro/Close 9:12

Thanks for tuning in to the Fort Myers Beach Good Neighbor podcast. No shade, just sunshine, drama-free, positive vibes only. If you love what you heard, share it with a friend and keep the good vibes going. Until next time, remember to cobbo until you wobble in keeping a good neighbor. Also, to nominate your favorite neighbors, local legends, heroes, or local businesses, to be on the show. Go to fmb goodneighbor.com. That's fmgoodneighbor.com or call 23947-4100. Why don't you send us an island love, State Insurance USA, Snug Harbor, Nervous Nellie's, and the Alex King Group They're the good neighbors and businesses. Allow us to share the soul of our community everywhere. Here's celebrating all the Make Ft Myers beach the paradise we all love.