He Sells Sea Brews

Armed with skills from Cape Fear Community College’s entrepreneurial classes, teenage entrepreneur Weston Timco finds success with a coffee cart on the shores of Ocean Isle Beach.

I did not ask Weston Timco his middle name when we sat down to chat recently. But if turned out to be “Gumption” or “Spunk” I would not be surprised.

The young man (just 17 at this writing), who lives with his parents near Varnamtown in southeastern Brunswick County, is clearly poised for great things in the future because he is already doing some remarkable things in the present.

While many young folks his age are content to get a part-time job and hang out at the beach for the summer, Timco has a full-time job using the beach to make money.

“I was on the beach one day, and I saw a kid my age pushing a cart on the beach selling Slushies,” he says. “I thought to myself, ‘What else would people on the beach buy if it came delivered almost to their blanket?’”

His 18-year-old sister, who worked at Holden Beach’s Ocean Boulevard Coffee Shop, provided the answer. She told him she could not believe how many people left the beach to come to the store to buy coffee during the day.

A very bright light, likely an LED, went off in Timco’s head, and his budding business Sea Brews was born.

The homeschooled lad, who has worked since he was 12, first invested some of his savings in an LLC designation. Then he took some courses at Cape Fear Community College — courses offered for free to high schoolers and home schoolers here in NC — and began to learn the ins and outs of being an entrepreneur.

He was also assisted by his parents, business owners who operate Cruisin’ Tikis and the Holden Beach RV campground.

Timco built his own beach cart and stocked it with various flavorings. He began to buy coffee from the place where his sister worked, signing a contract to buy three gallons of coffee per day at $32 a gallon. He then sold the flavored concoction cold right on Holden Beach and made over $8,000 profit after overhead his first summer.

But fate stepped in when his coffee supplier sold the business to new owners, who were not the least bit interested in selling coffee on the beach. As it happened, Holden Beach’s permit fees were rather pricey anyway at close to $1,300 a season, so Timco looked elsewhere.

Elsewhere was Ocean Isle Beach, and with one of its five available beach permits costing between just $200 and $300, Timco made his move in the summer of 2025.

In just his first month of plying the 2-mile shoreline on either side of the OIB pier, he had already profited to the tune of $7,000 after overhead.

What’s more, he had to hire an employee who works the cart seven days a week (unless it is raining). The employee is paid minimum wage plus tips, and in the case of Sea Brews, those tips come out to between $11 and $15 per hour.

Timco must also have sharpened his negotiating skills because he had to buy a box truck. He found a used one at U-Haul, and talked them down from $11,000 to $7,000. Hey, ya gotta spend money to make money.

At this writing he was building a second cart, which should improve his bottom line rather nicely.

When I asked Timco how he came up with the name of his business, he allowed that it was the product of an invigorating family discussion. And Sea Brews was born.
For $8, buyers get a 16 oz. cup of cold joe, flavored with their favorite syrup. Timco confesses that he had to add a pumpkin spice flavor when September rolled around. We all know why.

I asked how he knew OIB would be a good place to operate, and he said, “On my very first day here, I was pushing the cart through the pathway on the dunes — not even on the flat sand yet — and four people were standing in line for my coffee.”

His entrepreneur’s brain is always in “on” mode, and he said he was investigating a company called Lotus Plant Energy because the caffeine in its product is naturally present.

To my question about where he sees himself in three to five years (at the ripe old age of 20 to 22), his response was indicative of his mindset: “I want to build multiple carts for the beach and possibly have a warehouse that is my base of operations; and that would kickstart my journey into real estate investing as well,” he says.

Something tells me we will be reading about Mr. Timco’s Real Estate success in the not-too-distant future.

He was very effusive in his praise for that Cape Fear Community College program that got him where he is. But does taking the free course guarantee success?

The smart money says yes.

Provided you’ve got the gumption and spunk of young Weston Timco.

BEACH PERKS
Sea Brews
In the warm seasons, find Sea Brews on the beach near Ocean Isle Beach Pier or online at:
Facebook: Sea Brews
Insatgram: sea_brews