GREEN COVE SPRINGS – The vegetables are selected from a farmer’s market in Starke. Lettuce is grown at a local aquaponics farm called Reparation Earth, not delivered in plastic bags by a distributor.

Meat is fresh and hand cut. Mayport shrimp are never frozen. They are cleaned and deveined on Thursday nights. When ordered on Friday-through-Sundays, they are breaded and deep-fried “the minute it’s ordered.” Pot roast, chicken and dumplings, baked ziti and lasagna are scratch-made recipes. Fried chicken, fries, chicken fried steak, pork chops and hamburgers are cooked when ordered.

Not bad for pool hall food.

Cheri and Noel Starnes bought The Corner Pocket in 2018. They survived COVID-19. They banned smoking. They added a dining room called Around the Corner Diner. They obtained a liquor license and created a comfort menu that would make grandma happy … and jealous.

On the billiards side of the house, they replaced the old tables with 10 new seven-foot Diamond tables that host nightly league play and tournaments.

The Starnes then added breakfast service on weekends.

“I think running my business, it was a bigger job than what I had expected,” Cheri said. “But then, of course, I grew the business, and it turned into that. We didn't use to have weekend breakfast. I mean, when we bought it, we were opening at 5 [p.m.] and closing at midnight, and we did that six days a week. Now we have breakfast on the weekends, and we have lunch and dinner every night. We're open seven days a week, and I try to be there sometime through the day, every day, often I'm cooking, helping my team with customers.”

With that kind of schedule, what did Cheri do? She ran for the City of Green Cove Springs City Council.

And won.

On Tuesday, May 19, her fellow council members voted to make her the vice mayor.

She’s also an active member of the Rotary Club of Green Cove Springs and the Village Improvement Association.

“My days are long,” she said. “I start early and I go into the mid-evening, like 8 or 9 at night. But I'm enjoying it though.”

Cheri is consumed with helping her community. She hosts benefits at the Corner Pocket at least twice a month for those in need or nonprofits like Clay PAL or families facing issues like cancer, medical or funeral expenses or the upcoming Soul Food Festival.

Her husband helped negotiate critical discounts for new windows for the Vineyard Transitional Center—where newly released inmates from the Clay County Jail can receive jobs and life skill training—and a cluster of mini farms where foster parents are paired with forever children in Melrose at a development called Echo Lakes.

“We are always reaching out, or people are reaching out to us,” Cheri said. “I'm always happy to help with any kind of good cause. My grandkids will always say, ‘Grammy, why do you belong to Rotary? And why do you do the VIA? Why are you always having parties for people and donating money and such? I guess I was just born a do-gooder. It just feels so good to do good things for people.”

And it all starts with The Corner Pocket.

“All of our sandwich meats are Boar’s Head,” Cheri said. “We cut it in-house. We still make our cornbread and meatloaf from scratch. It’s extra work, but it’s worth it.

“People still come in and they’re surprised to know we’re also a diner, and that everything is homemade.”

The extra effort is the only way Cheri knows. After all, if she ever took a shortcut, customers would taste the difference, and constituents would notice a difference, too.