This story is part of our July 2026 Young Professionals issue. To read the print version, click here.

When the school bell rings to signal the end of the day, many high schoolers breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that other than any outstanding assignments, their work is done for the day. But for 16-year-old Harvey Uyeyama, that bell means his work is about to start. As the co-owner of a subscription-based coffee roasting business, the hours after school are his time to develop his business, fill orders and brainstorm new ideas.

This Davis teen is one of several Capital Region entrepreneurs who decided to strike out in the food business scene before or within a few years of graduating high school. From financial struggles to imposter syndrome to the difficulty of wading through permits and contracts, they’ve all been in the trenches of creating something out of nothing — all while facing the realities of young adulthood.

Harvey’s Coffee

“With a young age comes lower expectations from people of what you can and can’t accomplish,” Uyeyama of Harvey’s Coffee says. “It feels like it’s my job to prove them wrong every time.”

Uyeyama’s father, who died in August 2024, taught him everything he knows about small-batch roasting on a manual machine — how to use all five senses while roasting to produce the best flavor. Uyeyama was asked to roast coffee for his father’s funeral, and after that, he decided to continue the business, using his hand-me-down drum roaster to individually fill orders and preserve his dad’s legacy.

Although Uyeyama’s dad taught him the art of roasting coffee, he had to figure out a lot about how to run a business on his own — including how to handle the legal side of things (forming an LLC, opening a bank account) as a minor. “It makes things 10 times harder,” Uyeyama says. He’s unable to sign legal documents like these himself, so his 18-year-old girlfriend and co-owner, Abby Merchant, signs them instead.

He genuinely enjoys figuring out how to continually make his business better, whether that means spending hours after school tinkering with the online shop for his small-batch beans, impressing monthly subscribers with an especially interesting single origin or redesigning packaging to appeal to a younger customer base.

He pointed to Merchant, who is also involved with graphic design, marketing and financial operations for the business, and his best friend Dash Voskuhl, who helps with delivery, as two people who have helped him learn that being a successful business owner means relying on others for support when you need it.

“I think people love watching someone start something that they wish they could have started when they were younger,” Uyeyama says.

Sweet Haven Bakery

Every cookie, brownie and slice of cake at Sweet Haven Bakery tastes like it was baked in a mother’s kitchen — probably because it literally was. Many of the sweet treats are baked fresh in 20-year-old owner Haven Claycomb family’s kitchen and transported to the shelves of the Citrus Heights storefront in the morning. Some of the baking now takes place in a commercial kitchen, but the home-cooked feel has remained.

And it really is a family endeavor. Claycomb is the baking mastermind behind the shop, but his brother, Rane, is a secondary baker, while his mom, Trina, is the bakery’s manager, and his dad, Colin, helps run the store during the day. Both of his parents have experience with entrepreneurship, so when they saw Claycomb’s love for baking, they asked if he wanted to turn it into something bigger.

“Anytime I said, ‘I want to do this!’ they were like, ‘Go ahead, try it,’” Claycomb says. “And that’s what started the business — them saying, ‘Let’s do it. Keep trying, you’re doing amazing.’”

In the beginning, Claycomb mostly made treats for friends to cheer them up during the pandemic. That turned into hosting a pop-up event inside their house — which completely sold out. After that, he started hosting more and more pop-ups, until two years ago, when Sweet Haven opened a storefront in Citrus Heights. In April, operations moved to a new location in Fair Oaks just a couple of minutes away from the old spot, where the family hopes to eventually build out a commercial kitchen.

Even after six years of owning and running a baking business and making desserts for weddings, baby showers and more, Claycomb says imposter syndrome still sometimes creeps in.

“When people eat my desserts in front of me and then tell me they’re good, I just feel like, ‘No, you’re lying,’” Claycomb says. “But I am getting better about it.”

Haven and his family are excited about the future of the business and how they’ll grow in the coming years. But Trina says she believes as a business owner, it’s important to recognize that if there comes a point where you’re no longer passionate about the work that you’re doing, it’s OK to shift gears.

“I don’t care where we’re at in life — I’ll always check in to say, ‘Is this still what you want to do? Are you still happy?’” Trina says. “If not, you haven’t failed. You haven’t given up. All you’re doing is changing.”

The Point Coffee and Matcha

Twenty-three-year-old twin sisters Roxana and Vilma Elvir, founders of The Point Coffee and Matcha, vividly remember spending their last $200 on heavy cream and vanilla wafers for a pop-up at Beer’s Books in Sacramento. They needed it for the banana pudding-inspired cold foam they would dollop atop matcha lattes.

“Both of our accounts literally hit zero,” Vilma says. “It just felt like, ‘Who in their right mind would do what we’re doing right now?’”

Thankfully, the pop-up went well, and they earned back a profit — and some confidence in their business’ potential. That was last fall. Since then, their customer base has rapidly grown, and now The Point is booked out for pop-ups throughout the Sacramento area nearly every weekend, setting up shop at bookstores, farmers markets and lavender farms with an ever-changing menu. But it was a long path to get to where they are today. So what convinced them to make the leap?

“After graduating college, I applied to about 200 jobs,” Vilma says. Vilma and Roxana both attended UC Santa Barbara, majoring in communications and political science, respectively. “Nothing. No callbacks, no interviews. And I was like, ‘What the actual hell am I doing wrong?’”

Roxana was having a similarly hopeless feeling about job prospects. So when she and her sister stopped by the Davis Farmers Market on a trip to visit her fiance, who goes to school at UC Davis, they were struck by how happy the vendors seemed to be.

“I wanted to find something I loved to do like that,” Vilma says.

The first thing that came to mind? Matcha. The sisters went home that day, started drawing a logo and figuring out permits, and soon got accepted into a small farmers market near the Coachella Valley, where they lived at the time. After a few months of long days and low sales, they decided on a semi-spontaneous move to Davis, which meant higher rent and building a customer base from scratch — but also new opportunities.

“Every night, I would kind of just look at Rox and want to tell her, ‘Hey, let’s move back home,’” Vilma says. “I think we both thought it, but neither of us said it out loud.”

But the Beers Books pop-up relit a spark in them — and just in time. They started seeing repeat customers at every event, finding lines wrapped around the block at their events and regularly selling out of menu items.

The twins have big dreams for the future, including a permanent cafe location and building out their own matcha brand — but they’re also trying to appreciate that sometimes, building a business means taking baby steps.

“It’s appreciating the small wins,” Roxana says. “At the first event we ever did, I smashed our taillight into a post while I was backing out. But I was like, you know what? It’s okay. We just did an event! Changing your mindset will propel you forward.”

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