At the age of 11, most chil­dren will vol­un­teer to do chores or prac­tice their best ver­sion of “ma­m­aguy” to get their par­ents to give them mon­ey to fund their hob­bies.

How­ev­er, Luke Zion Fournil­li­er has ap­proached this dif­fer­ent­ly, earn­ing his own mon­ey through his own busi­ness, Noo­dle King.

His rise to the throne start­ed about five years ear­li­er through his love for noo­dles as well as his de­sire to fol­low in his moth­er Ja­mil­ia Con­stance’s foot­steps by open­ing a busi­ness.

This pushed him to at­tempt en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

“When my mom­my and I used to go out, I used to or­der noo­dles and the first time I tried it I fell in love with it. Then, af­ter a lit­tle while, I asked her if I could start my own busi­ness, be­cause she had a busi­ness as well. I named it Noo­dle King,” he told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

Con­stance was in­spired to start her own busi­ness, Aun­ty Jams in 2015 when her son was born.

She shared she was sur­prised when he ap­proached her with the idea of ven­tur­ing in­to busi­ness.

“I asked him what he want­ed to sell. And he told me about his love for noo­dles, and that’s what he want­ed to sell. I am very proud. I start­ed off show­ing him how to do dif­fer­ent things, be­cause he ex­pressed an in­ter­est. While I had my restau­rant in Mar­aval, he came up to me, and he told me he want­ed to open his own busi­ness. And I was in shock. And ob­vi­ous­ly I lis­tened to his ideas. One of the things he told me is that he want­ed to have pro­tect­ed dogs. He want­ed to have work­ers. He want­ed to have a build­ing, the full works,” she ex­plained.

Af­ter show­ing him the ropes, the Noo­dle King cut his teeth by sell­ing at her restau­rant ini­tial­ly. as Con­stance added, “He would do pop-ups at my shop, and he would nor­mal­ly sell out. In terms of as a par­ent, see­ing him now in the kitchen by him­self mak­ing meals, it ba­si­cal­ly melts my heart to see that hap­pen­ing.”

On feed­back about his busi­ness thus far, Luke Zion said, “The re­ac­tion I got from peo­ple is that they were usu­al­ly very hap­py and they said the food was tast­ing very good.”

Aun­ty Jams has since closed that branch, but the Noo­dle King is still do­ing pop-ups and de­liv­ery or­ders main­ly in the San Juan/San­ta Cruz area.

“We sell at Un­cle Bed­doe’s, two Sun­days out of the month. We do or­ders as well on Sun­days. We sell chick­en, shrimp, some­times lamb, fish and veg­gies,” he said.

Over the re­cent East­er va­ca­tion, the Noo­dle King did pop-ups around the coun­try to push the brand fur­ther. On av­er­age, Luke Zion said he would re­ceive about 10 to 15 or­ders week­ly.

As the brand grows in pop­u­lar­i­ty, he said, “I start­ed it to see if I could save mon­ey for my­self and I could use it.”

Pressed about what he would use it for, he said, “Roblox!” prompt­ing a laugh from his moth­er.

But the young­ster said he would al­so use the mon­ey to rein­vest in the bur­geon­ing busi­ness as well.

When asked about what made his noo­dles stand out among the com­pe­ti­tion, he sim­ply says the se­cret is to “put love in­to it.”

How­ev­er, his moth­er ex­plained that the young en­tre­pre­neur had de­vel­oped a taste which aug­ment­ed his culi­nary skill.

“I no­ticed that there was a time we were bak­ing noo­dles, and it need­ed some­thing. It was miss­ing some­thing, and he was able to put in the in­gre­di­ents to en­hance the flavour of that dish. And I no­ticed that was some­thing spe­cial, that not every­body could com­plete a meal so that it would be tasty. And I re­alised he was able to do that, and he did it sev­er­al oth­er times, so I re­alised it was a gift that he had, be­cause he’s very big on taste. It’s some­thing I told him to ex­pose him­self to by ex­tend­ing his palette to dif­fer­ent things. So he would ap­pre­ci­ate build­ing a meal it­self,” she ex­plained,

While she does sup­port her son through the pro­cure­ment of in­gre­di­ents, Con­stance said the ma­jor de­vel­op­ment of the busi­ness has al­so shaped his con­fi­dence, not­ing that the process was a les­son she felt many young peo­ple learn at a fair­ly ear­ly stage of their life.

“It’s very, very, very, im­por­tant. Every sin­gle per­son, every in­di­vid­ual. It’s a hur­dle that they would have to go through. I think per­son­al­ly, when we in­tro­duce our chil­dren at a younger age to this type of en­vi­ron­ment, as they get old­er, they would, they would ap­pre­ci­ate and be able to deal with the amount of ob­sta­cles that would come their way be­cause of their ear­ly ex­po­sure to busi­ness,” she said.

Con­stance added, “I have seen how it has helped his con­fi­dence, be­cause he deals with cus­tomers. When he goes to Un­cle Bed­doe’s, we don’t just leave him alone. What we do is that we would come, and we would tell peo­ple about what he’s sell­ing and he would in­ter­act with them and that would build his con­fi­dence a lot. So, for me as a par­ent, I have seen the pos­i­tive ef­fect it has had on him, and I would like to do that for my campers this year as well, be­cause they them­selves start­ed busi­ness­es and they ac­tu­al­ly sold prod­ucts and made some mon­ey.”

With this in mind, while host­ing a re­cent va­ca­tion camp, she al­so en­cour­aged par­tic­i­pants to chal­lenge them­selves to cre­ate busi­ness ideas over the pe­ri­od.

She felt teach­ing this les­son could pre­pare the up­com­ing gen­er­a­tion for en­tre­pre­neur­ship and could shape the econ­o­my in the fu­ture.

“When you teach them from an ear­ly age how to make their ideas and how to make their ideas be­come a busi­ness or a ser­vice or some­thing that could help an­oth­er per­son, it en­ables them in so many ways, holis­ti­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, every way that our in­di­vid­ual hu­man would need to ac­tu­al­ly be suc­cess­ful in this life,” Con­stance added.