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.’”

Sweet Haven Bakery in Fair Oaks offers a variety of cupcake
flavors that change monthly and seasonally. (Photo by Claycomb
Photography, courtesy of Sweet Haven Bakery)

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?’”

Roxana and Vilma Elvir, the twin sisters behind The Point Matcha
and Coffee, display their strawberry matcha at a pop-up event at
HvH Specialty Growers June 13. (Photo by Bea Ahbeck)

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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