Carrie’s Corner Store & Cafe in Stephens has it all — a menu spanning from breakfast plates and biscuits to boiled peanuts, buttermilk pie and everything in between. But what owner Carrie Faris is most proud of about her store is the community it has built since it opened in 2022.
“We’ve had people that come in that we feel like are like family now,” she said. “They know all about us and we know all about them.”
Faris said Carrie’s offers an environment where customers can get a full plate of food and a chance to sit and convene with the community.
The store’s staff consists of Faris, her daughter Brittany Locke, main chef Paulette Cade, chef Caitlyn Hild and Douglas “Fuzzy” Hemphill, who takes care of day-to-day tasks around the store and talks with all the customers.
“A lot of it is, (customers) who like the small-town camaraderie,” Faris said.
The cafe’s short order menu for breakfast and lunch stays the same throughout the week, but the hot lunch special is different every day. Cade, who has worked at Carrie’s for nearly two years, comes up with the weekly special menus, which are written out and posted on Facebook every Sunday.
“I used to own a restaurant, so I kind of go back to what I used to do,” Cade said.
Faris said social media has been integral for the growth of her business. She posts every day on Facebook to spread the word, and said the cafe has provided food for the Maxeys Christmas Parade, the Arnoldsville Cemetery Association and the Oglethorpe County High School football team, to name a few.
This week, Carrie’s is offering Thanksgiving plates, which Cade began preparing on Monday for customers to pick up on Wednesday. The plates will include turkey, dressing, green beans, mac and cheese and cranberry sauce, and pies are also available to purchase.
When Faris and Locke opened the cafe, they planned to offer a menu of sub sandwiches and pasta salads. Since being in business, Faris said they’ve gotten to know the desires of the community, and have grown to meet those.
“These farmers out here, they want hot meals,” Faris said. “It’s constantly evolving.”
About two months ago, Carrie’s expanded its hours to Sundays after hearing from residents that there was nowhere to eat in Oglethorpe County on Sundays, and they were driving to Athens to find restaurants.
“We try to listen to the customer. They’ve been doing that for a year now, saying ‘Oh, y’all need to open on Sundays, we need somewhere to go after church,’” Faris said. “So we just started that, and it’s done well, so that makes me happy and it makes them happy.”
Faris said she’d like to build a covered outdoor dining area, and eventually start serving dinner. For now, Carrie’s is focused on meeting the needs of the community, one step at a time.
“The area that we’re in, a lot of people appreciate the fact that they have somewhere that they can just sit down and eat without having to drive forever,” Locke said.