Bluffton’s youngest business owner is serving up sweets with dreams for her profits
Shelby Pinski may be only 12, but she’s had a mind for business for a long time.
At age 3, she started a lemonade stand at her Rose Hill home in Bluffton. Neighbors and passersby would stop for a glass.
“She’s always scheming on how to make money,” her mother, Christy Pinski, owner of Sippin Cow at 36 Promenade Street, said Friday.
Now a rising seventh-grader at Hilton Head Preparatory School, Shelby has started her own business within the Sippin Cow, serving ice cream to customers.
“I wanted to start making money so I could spend it on things that I would want or need,” Shelby said. “So I brought up a business plan to work at my mom’s restaurant.”
The ice cream shop within the restaurant opened at the beginning of the summer. There, Shelby works from noon to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays and strolls among diners to drum up business with her vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavors.
Her mother, she said, is working on adding a sweet potato ice cream that is gluten free, dairy free and vegan to the menu.
“Words don’t describe how proud I am of her,” Pinski said.
Pinski said her daughter asked her to lunch in February and brought up her business idea.
“She had already done research on her own,” Pinski said. “She made me look at her phone and she showed me all the different things she wanted to do and what she wanted her ice cream shop to look like.”
Shelby charges $3 for a small cup or cone, $4 for a large, and milkshakes are $5 — and she has big plans for the cash after she pays rent, electricity and water bills at the Cow.
“I’m saving and trying to get a kitten,” Shelby said. “If I save enough money after I buy the kitten, I want to buy an old Volkswagen Beetle.”
She said she wants to buy an older car she can fix up herself, work she plans to do before she’s old enough to drive.
When she goes back to school, she and her mother plan to work out a plan for the ice cream shop to stay open. Pinski said other staff at the Sippin Cow will be in charge of it in the meantime.
“(Shelby) buzzes around the restaurant and she’s learning,” Pinski said. “I would say her business has tripled since it started.”
This story was originally published August 4, 2018 at 8:59 AM.