He Opened 2 Cafes in a Year While in High School. Meet Stemistry's Teenage CEO

It’s a massive undertaking to open one food and beverage business, let alone two in a single year. Now imagine doing all that while going to high school.

That’s exactly what Dylan Capshaw, a 17-year-old from Scottsdale, has managed — while also running a wildlife rescue at his home and taking helicopter piloting lessons as a hobby, among other interests.

Capshaw owns Stemistry, a cafe and flower shop that opened in Scottsdale in March 2022. In February, the second location of the cafe soft-opened in the historic Teeter-Carriage House in downtown Phoenix. The tiny shop sells coffee drinks, pastries, and sandwiches, and has a build-your-own-bouquet bar.

Stemistry’s Phoenix location will celebrate its grand opening under the pergola at Heritage Square from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on March 26, featuring samples from vendors and a discount on its signature coffee drink, the rose latte. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Humane Animal Rescue and Trapping Team Arizona, a local nonprofit that supports lost dogs and cats.

It’s possible that Capshaw is the youngest owner of a brick-and-mortar store in the country — his family and marketing team haven’t found anyone younger. How has a teenager managed all this?

Capshaw credits his success in part to his time management skills. “I think it’s all about scheduling,” the Rancho Solano Preparatory School junior says. “I’m up at 4 a.m. And I have a super set schedule to make sure I get everything done in the day,” including feeding all the animals.

As regimented as he is, Capshaw says he loves what he does and is always thirsty to know more.

“Since opening a store, one thing I’ve learned is, I’m always learning,” Capshaw says. “I’m constantly learning something new about running a business.” After all, he hasn’t been to business school yet, but that’s in the plan.

At this point, however, Capshaw could probably teach a course or two. His LinkedIn page lists him as the founder, co-founder, president, and/or CEO of six companies and nonprofits, and those are just the recent ones. He’s actually been running businesses since kindergarten, his mother recalls, when he ordered a shipment of squishy toys and sold them to his classmates.

“He was always entrepreneurial,” says his mom, Amy Capshaw. “He just wasn’t into sitting down and playing with GI Joes or Marvel characters.”

At age 10, he asked for a drone and began taking photos of homes for local real estate agents. At 11, his mom recalled, he bought a breadmaking machine for $5 at a garage sale and started selling his loaves on Nextdoor. Users online — not knowing he was just a kid — would ask if he could bake gluten-free bread or deliver to Cave Creek.

In addition to his business acumen, Capshaw has a philanthropic streak that drives him. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, and Capshaw, then 11, was so moved to hear about displaced pets and wildlife that he raised $2,000 to donate to a shelter.

“We were able to save 10 dogs,” Capshaw says, and he was invited to a Houston Astros game.

That was the impetus for starting a wildlife rescue and filing paperwork to create the Dylan Capshaw Wildlife Foundation. It has 60 animals — including an African crested porcupine, capybara, and Savannah monitor — that live on his family’s property. He’s also rescued and rehabilitated hundreds of animals that went to live in zoos or sanctuaries.

Capshaw launched the nonprofit with the same curiosity and fervor that he’s drawn upon for all of his endeavors. When he took in a baby wallaby, he read every book he could find on caring for one.

“Baby marsupials are extremely tedious to care for because they require bottle feeding every hour,” he explains. But he did it and still has the wallaby to this day.

Capshaw also created 3-D printed plastic face shields during the early days of the pandemic and supplied them for free to police departments, hospitals, and airlines. That nonprofit, For the Frontline, landed him a nomination for TIME Magazine’s inaugural Kid of the Year contest, for which he was a finalist.

The seeds for Stemistry were sown out of the pandemic, too. Using exotic plants that he’d added to the yard for all of his wild animals, Capshaw started an online store on Etsy. “I started cutting those and marketed them as aromatherapy shower bundles,” he says.

Eventually, the yard ran out of inventory, but he continued selling mail-order flowers by buying them wholesale from a local vendor. He overnighted them at a low markup all over the country through the United States Post Office, which then charged $15 per box.

After two years and 10,000 sales, Capshaw says, “I sat my parents down and said, ‘I can’t sell flowers out of our garage forever.’” He asked them to sign a lease for the first Stemistry in Scottsdale. “Somehow my parents agreed to it after seeing the amount of money I brought in online,” he says. “It was the real deal.”

Amy Capshaw says she and her husband, David, didn’t instill the spark for business in their son. “He does all the research by himself,” she says. “I didn’t come from a very risk-taking family, so this was a little bit new to me.”

She and David did, however, encourage their son. “We listen to his idea and hear how he’s going to execute it, and we’re supportive of him,” Amy Capshaw says. “We’ve really encouraged him to go for it.”

They also drove him everywhere until he got his driver’s license last year, including to conduct job interviews.

Capshaw says he’s learned from every business and nonprofit and applied the lessons to the next. All along, he’s re-invested his profits and saved money.

But he admits he’s experienced obstacles. The first came when the USPS raised shipping rates.

“I thought that was the end of our online,” Capshaw says of Stemistry. “But I was able to sit and think about my options and went to the UPS store and talked to a manager, and they were able to offer that same $15 rate.”

He’s had other challenges with Stemistry as well. It wasn’t easy finding employees to work for him once they saw he was a teenager. And, he notes, “I had never interviewed for a job myself, so it was tedious at first.”

Getting the right balance of inventory, finding distributors and wholesalers, and dealing with the bureaucracy of permits have been a struggle as well.

“In Phoenix, I’ve learned you need permits for basically everything,” Capshaw says. And there are those unexpected moments, such as when a brand-new oven at the Phoenix location went on the fritz so they couldn’t sell any food temporarily.

Capshaw’s mentor, business consultant Sarah Cottingham said his age presents issues at times, too.

“He’s in the middle of school, so you could have a management issue and he’s in the middle of history class,” she says. “So you’re working around a different schedule.”

On the upside, Cottingham notes, Capshaw has a fresh, unconventional perspective and unbound optimism. For example, if Stemistry runs out of milk, he’ll get it delivered.

“We have solved lots of business challenges with Instacart,” Cottingham laughs.

And, she says, Capshaw is dedicated. “When he has a vision, he just makes it happen. His way of viewing the world, he just doesn’t see limits… He doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Another potential component for success is that Capshaw works collaboratively and keeps all ideas on the table says employee Nate Martinez.

“It’s very fluid in the way we take constructive criticism from each other," Martinez says. "Whether it’s for better business practices or we’re introducing a new vendor, we always try to get everyone’s opinions.”

Capshaw says, “I think we all view each other as equals, and that really helps.”

Despite all his ambition, Capshaw claims part of the reason he’s working so hard now is so he can enjoy life later.

“Hopefully I can retire younger and have some more time to travel and grow a family,” he says. “That would be amazing and make all the hard work now worth it in the end.”

He amends that statement to say he would “half-retire,” because, he states, “I feel like I would go crazy if I were to have an empty day.”

So keep an eye on Capshaw, because it’s likely he’ll expand his empire beyond two cafes.

“I definitely have my plate full with these two, but I’m always thinking about other businesses,” Capshaw says. “I absolutely see myself growing Stemistry, but other concepts as well.”

Stemistry Heritage Square

618 East Adams Street
480-371-3118