Student Side Hustles
Story by Ondrea Machin | Photos by Kassandra Eller & Michelle Reyes | Design by Morgan Rosentrater
Daeon Hudson:
Cooking comes from the heart, and when it’s made with love, it tastes even better. However, not everyone knows how to cook. Some learn from their parents and grandparents, and others just have a passion for food.
Daeon Hudson, senior ITAM major at CWU, has had a passion for cooking ever since he was young. Hudson started off making simple dishes, such as steak and fried bologna, but it wasn’t until 2018 that he realized he had a love for cooking.
Hudson makes dishes and sells them on the side. He started posting his food on Snapchat and Instagram, and it took off from there. Hudson went to Grocery Outlet to buy food supplies, bought to-go containers off Amazon and his love for cooking grew even more.
“It's just a way for me to express myself and a way for me to be at peace, you know, some other hobby, outside of sports and everything and it's just like being in a kitchen gives me a peace of mind,” Hudson says.
Being in the kitchen is a comfort to Hudson, and he says could stay there all day if he needed to. Just recently, he made gumbo. In order to make a good gumbo, it needs a good roux. Hudson says it takes an hour of straight stirring to make the roux, but he finds joy in his cooking.
“It's beneficial to the world, everybody loves good food, any food every day… like people love good food and they're always looking for the next bite,” Hudson says.
Later on down the road, Hudson aspires to utilize his skills and open a food truck and turn that into a restaurant or a few, but he wants it to stay small and more local rather than becoming a chain restaurant.
Ozzie Estevez-Flores:
Being trendy is the new wave in the fashion world, from bringing back trends from the 90s or renaming old trends and making them new. But one student made his own clothing brand and took fashion to a whole new level.
Ozzie Estevez-Flores, junior accounting major at CWU, wanted to start making his own clothing designs in middle school. Then in high school, he bought a screen printer to make T-shirts and started making his own designs, which grew in popularity from his peers and he began selling them.
Estevez-Flores currently prints and sells his designs at a boutique in Yakima, as well as printing shirts for the boutique.
In 2019, Estevez-Flores received a message on Instagram from the owner of New Yak City asking Estevez-Flores to design T-shirts for him. After that, they worked together and shared designs back and forth.
“From there, it kind of caught on, you know, during COVID the business actually grew way more than pretty much any other year and people seem to like T-shirts, and so we've slowly been building up the customer base for the T-shirts for the brand,” Estevez-Flores says.
The brand represents the Hispanic community with designs inspired by the Virgin Mary and Mexican iconography with hopes to expand those designs into street wear.
“The main thing I want to do is just have my own studio, where I can do everything like all in one and just have artists or photographers or just creative people come through, that's the main,” Estevez-Flores says.
From the shirts Estevez-Flores sells, he is able to continue making designs and build funding for his side business.
Laura Guillen:
Have you ever wanted to start a small business, but you’re not sure where to start or even what to sell? That’s how one student felt, but six months later she is starting to gain traction and finding her niche.
Laura Guillen, senior family and consumer science education major, was stuck at home when COVID-19 first hit. Instead of just sitting around, she decided to get her creative juices flowing and started making custom cups, shirts and a drink mix and posting them on Instagram.
Guillen is still working on getting her business going, but she has found that her chamoy drink mix is very popular. Chamoy drink mix is a popular additive to drinks in Mexican culture.
“It’s fun and it’s good and it’s like for parties and stuff or get-togethers like it adds a little something to your drink whether it’s alcoholic or not,” Guillen says.
Since starting this side business, Guillen is able to pay bills, pay for textbooks and other school supplies, basic necessities and whatever the Financial Aid office doesn’t cover. She encourages people to start their own business as well.
“If you have an idea that you think others will like, I say just go for it and start showing it to your friends and your family,” Guillen says.
A goal of Guillen’s is to open an online shop and be able to take orders outside of her friends and family. As of right now, she takes orders through her Instagram @madebylaura.gn.
Yesenia Ramirez:
The average American spends $1,889 a month on household bills, according to Doxo’s 2021 United States of Bill Pay Report.
Yesenia Ramirez, senior sociology major, says the extra income helps her pay rent, buy groceries, gas and other expenses. She started painting in March 2020 and shared her work on Snapchat, which is where she sold her first painting, but Ramirez didn’t start actively selling until last year when she joined TikTok.
Ramirez mainly paints anime. She first got into anime in elementary school, but she felt embarrassed about it because not many people were into it. But once she opened up about her love for anime, she wanted to paint more.
“I've been able to paint better than when I was hiding it, and I think that's really what inspired me to paint because I just wanted to have it on my wall instead of buying a poster,” Ramirez says.
One of her favorite customer interactions was when she made two paintings for one customer, and they gave her creative freedom to paint however she wanted so long as half the face was human and the other half the monster.
“It took me months to do because I was balancing school still at the same time while doing this like painting what he wanted and in the end it turned out really good, like there's no picture out there that looks like it,” Ramirez says.
Ramirez plans to keep making paintings, but she doesn’t want to make it a big business because she wants to focus on her career and wants to paint for herself, as well as a small number of customers.
