DALLAS—Arlington, Texas, resident Olivia Huynh has been greeting customers at Rocketbelly, her restaurant in Arlington, since she was 10 years old. It might become her most successful venture so far, but she’s been an entrepreneur since age 7.
Olivia opened her first company in 2019, selling mail-order baking kits for customers who wanted to make cakes at home without a trip to the store. Olivia used $3,500 from her savings account, which she earned from acting in ads for Havertys, Chili’s, and Pizza Hut. The baking kit business quickly took over the family home.
“We cleaned out her bedroom and turned it into a cookie mix factory,” said Olivia’s mom Mary Huynh, who home-schools her four children. When the business took off during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mary Huynh and her husband, Joseph Nguyen, cleared out the master bedroom, too.
“We all slept in the living room,” Mary said. The family eventually transitioned the business from cake mixes to bubble tea, then closed the company altogether. It was overwhelming, Olivia said. But soon, Olivia was inspired to open another business.
“My kids are always asking,” Mary said, “Can we do swimming lessons? Can we do this, can we do that? Most of the time, if it’s doable, I’ll say yes.”
So Mary and Joseph let their most extroverted child open a restaurant in a quiet corner of Arlington in late 2022. Olivia used about $10,000 in profit from her former businesses, plus she raised $1,900 on GoFundMe.
Rocketbelly sells a smattering of Olivia’s favorite things—bubble tea, chicken nuggets, curry, and cookies. The restaurant started as a lesson in business investments for Olivia’s home-school program but has blossomed into a real operation that’s run entirely by her immediate family members, who work 18-hour days, six days a week. Mary makes all the cookies, which come in a sugar rush of flavors: S’mores, candied bacon chocolate chip, blueberry vanilla lemon swirl, salty sea turtle and more. Joseph has a full-time job in cybersecurity, but he’s at the restaurant daily, frying chicken and stepping in when Mary isn’t there.
