Success tastes sweet for Huntington Beach teen running dessert shop
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Huntington Beach teenager Matthew Hunein still spends long hours just up the street from where he went to high school, although now he finds himself firmly entrenched in the real world.
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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