Success tastes sweet for Huntington Beach teen running dessert shop
The 2024 Edison High graduate recently opened a dessert shop, Crzookie Cookies and Ice Cream.
His senior project for Edison's Center for International Business and Communications Studies (CIBACS) program became a brick-and-mortar shop when it opened its doors last month.
Hunein's staff of 16 consists of local high school students, and a couple of people who attend Orange Coast College. Some of the staff are currently students in the CIBACS program themselves.
He said he definitely gets plenty of foot traffic from Edison, but he's also been feeling the good vibes from other places as Crzookie has gotten off the ground.
'Random strangers off the street that maybe I met once, a year ago, they remember me and they're rooting for me and they're genuinely happy for my success,' said Hunein, 18. 'The community in Huntington Beach is unmatched.'
Hunein operates the business owned by his parents, who also own three other restaurants in Orange County.
Lilian Hunein said all three of her kids were in the CIBACS program. Ashley, 25, is the oldest and runs a coffee shop in Santa Ana, inside a restaurant that the family also owns.
'It's a great program,' Lilian Hunein said. '[Matthew] was a shy kid, very introverted, and the guy who came out of that program is completely different. To me, it taught them how to speak in public. It taught them résumé building, it taught them how to interview. During our interview process for our employees, you can tell the difference between the ones that were in the CIBACS program and the ones that were not.'
Matthew, who was also Edison's ASB president as a senior, was in the CIBACS program for all four years he was at the campus.
The program has a long history.
Lori Chlarson, an English teacher at Edison who is the CIBACS faculty coordinator, said the program is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Students have projects each year. Their freshman year, the project involves moving an existing business to another country — Matthew Hunein came up with logistics of moving Jersey Mike's to Portugal.
As the students progress in the program, they job shadow their junior year, trying to identify their dream career.
Each CIBACS student then must write a business plan as part of their senior project; Matthew Hunein's was 42 pages long and included plenty of market analysis. He purposely opened his dessert shop next to a Chipotle, thinking customers might want some sweets after devouring their burrito bowls.
Chlarson can cite plenty of success stories from the program, which incorporates the students' English and social studies classes and has about 300 Edison students involved each year across the four grade levels. Many CIBACS alumni come back and judge students' projects in the spring.
'I'm just really proud of the work that Matt put into doing this, finding his footing,' Chlarson said. 'Following through and being able to actually open the doors on something like that is quite an accomplishment. It's really nice to see it actually come to fruition for him. He's got the marketing aspect of it wired. He came to our school and brought cookies to all of his teachers, then he went to the school district office and did the same thing over there.'
Crzookie has 16 ice cream flavors and 10 different warmed cookies available, along with bonuses like dirty sodas. Matthew Hunein has labeled beignets with syrup and powered sugar that will be available soon 'Habibi Bites,' a nod to his Egyptian heritage.
There's been plenty of fine tuning, but he said the biggest thing he's learned in the whole process is patience. The architectural plans were submitted in November of 2023, but he and his family had to wait for different approvals and construction before Crzookie could become a reality.
'Patience is the biggest thing that I didn't think that entrepreneurs needed,' Hunein said. 'I knew they needed it, but I didn't know how important it was going to be.'
Hunein is currently studying business administration at Irvine Valley College. He takes courses online so he can tend to the dessert shop.
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VRBO, another major short-term rental provider, did not respond to a request for comment. Pedro Homar knows this pressure well. As tourism director for Visit Palma, he's caught between visitors behaving badly in the Spanish city, and residents demanding action. 'We need to ensure that tourism is a sustainable industry, not just from an environmental point of view but also from a social and economic point of view,' he says. 'Our economy depends on tourism, so we either make sure we're physically sustainable or we will not have a future.' Since the pandemic, Palma has stopped promoting itself outright. Instead, it runs 'image campaigns' to shape perceptions — even running ads to call out antisocial behavior in certain resorts. In 2022, the city capped cruise ship arrivals at three a day, even though the port can handle six (Barcelona has followed suit, announcing in July that it will close two of its seven cruise terminals from 2026). 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Homar argues that destinations should have the right to choose their visitors, likening it to deciding whom to invite to dinner. 'I really do believe that as mature destinations, we have the right to choose the tourists that we want, and don't want,' he says. 'We want tourists that respect our personality, our way of living, our traditions. 'If you are thinking of coming over without a respectful point of view, we say, respectfully, we don't need you.' Josephides is blunter. 'They don't want the rabble anymore,' he says. 'It sounds awful to say so, and everyone's entitled to a holiday, but the numbers just keep growing. The whole thing is out of control. I can understand the democratization but it's up to the destination if they want clients without any money,' he adds. 'I'd like to drive a Ferrari, but I can't afford it.' For now, he says, most European destinations seem focused on capping numbers rather than pricing out budget travelers entirely. Restoring the goodwill of residents is just as important as tackling the crowds. 'A city where residents are not satisfied is a city that doesn't work,' says Ruben Santopietro, CEO of Visit Italy, a marketing company for various destinations across the country. 'It loses its identity completely. Residents feel excluded and neighborhoods become touristic.' Born in Naples, which saw protests over lack of housing and growing short-term rental numbers in March, Santopietro has watched his hometown surge in popularity — and housing prices — over the past decade. He warns that if growth continues unchecked, 'in five years, 50% of the città d'arte (Italian cities of culture) will become inaccessible.' Rome, Florence and Naples, he says, are already 'suffocated by tourism' almost to the point of no return. Visitors, he adds, actually want locals around. 'Venice belongs to the Venetians. If locals aren't there, they won't go. Putting residents at the center of tourism models is the only way to preserve our cities from becoming open-air museums.' Homar agrees, echoing the same phrase — 'putting residents at the center of the tourist strategy' — when talking about Palma's new five-year plan, adopted in 2023. Some hotels the city buys will be replaced with green spaces or converted to housing. In November, Palma will launch free cultural activities for locals — organ recitals, children's days in the old atelier of artist Joan Miró, theater concerts organized by Spanish national radio stations, guided architectural walks around the city — to 'uplift the sense of belonging and the pride of being a citizen.' 'All these initiatives will be in spaces that residents for some reason believe are just for tourists,' he says. 'We're seeing that the sense of belonging that residents used to have about being in Palma, they were slowly losing that and we need to change that dynamic.' Redistributing visitors can also help. The problem in Italy, Santopietro says, isn't that the country can't handle the numbers — it's that everyone goes to the same places. This summer, his agency launched a campaign, 'The 99% of Italy,' encouraging travelers to visit lesser-known destinations from Genoa to Tropea (some of which were their clients, but not all). 'We used social media platforms as they have created these imbalances,' he says, adding that they expect tangible results in the long term, as regional marketing campaigns take longer to take effect. Santopietro says that even in the busiest destinations, steps can be taken to disperse visitors. He suggests incentives — for example, discounted tickets to Rome's Colosseum for those who've already visited the ancient coastal town of Ostia Antica. In the short term, protests are likely to spread, says Estrella Diaz Sanchez, associate professor of marketing at Spain's University of Castilla-La Mancha. 'Some locals are frustrated about the number of tourists they receive, but I think the main factor is skyrocketing rents, driven by short-term holiday lets, pushing locals out of the housing markets,' she says. 'The solution isn't to reject tourism; it's to make it more inclusive and respectful.' Even Josephides, the tourism industry doomsayer, thinks recovery is possible. He points to Estoril, on the Lisbon coast, which in the 1970s was a mass-market destination. Authorities decided to push it upmarket, and succeeded. 'You can recover, but it takes time,' he says. 'It's much easier for a destination to control its growth rather than repair it afterwards.' See Full Web Article
