18-year-old uses her college savings to buy restaurant where she worked as a dishwasher

Ohio teenager Samantha Frye has always been driven. She began working at 14, balancing multiple jobs, and eventually chose entrepreneurship over college. By 18, she had earned titles like "entrepreneur" and "restaurateur." Today, she's the proud owner of the very restaurant where she once cooked, served, and even washed dishes, according to USA Today. Her journey is a beacon of inspiration for young people looking to launch their own businesses.

While attending Dover High School, Samantha began working at Rosalie’s Restaurant in Ohio at just 16. "I started working when I was 14, and by 16, I had two jobs, one of them here," Samantha told USA Today. "At one point, I was juggling three jobs, plus working with my dad. I just worked a lot." She spent nine months washing dishes at Rosalie's before moving on to serving and eventually cooking. She also worked at Blazin Burgers, a nearby restaurant in Dover.

After graduating from school, she enrolled at the Ohio State University during the fall semester to study environmental engineering. Just then, she came to know that Rosalie’s owners, Bob and Stephanie Roth, were planning to sell the restaurant, per PEOPLE. She felt she was interested in buying it and could afford it. "I was thinking that maybe this was something I wanted to do," she told CBS affiliate WNEM-TV. "I had savings because I was saving for college, so I had quite a bit of money saved away. And I was like, I could possibly do this." So, she left the college and instead took charge of the restaurant in the early summer of 2023. The previous owners, Roths, still live in a house at the back side of the restaurant.

"She's always been a go-getter," her mother Brandi Beitzel told USA Today. "Sam just has me in awe! I think back to when I was her age and there is no way I would have had the knowledge or the courage, or even be able to wrap my mind around the enormity of owning a restaurant." Not just her mother, but some of the restaurant’s regular customers were also astonished to know that Samantha had bought the eatery. Don Gerber who is a regular customer, for example, said, "When we heard that she bought the place, we were shocked ‒ 18 years old, and she's buying the place, got enough money for a down payment. How many 18-year-olds do you see like that? Not too many."

Samantha recalled that initially, her parents were skeptical of her buying the restaurant, as they had other expectations. "My mom, she was pretty angry at first, because her dream was for me was to finish college," she told USA Today. She, herself, didn’t envision this future for her, but the moment she bought the eatery, it became her priority, as she told the ABC affiliate WEWS-TV. "Right now, this is so new; this is my priority," she told the outlet. "Five days of the week, I'm in here. If not in here, I'm back there doing prep. The other two days, I'm in the office doing meetings with the sales reps."

While the restaurant runs under her management, Samantha’s focus is to bring environmental awareness into the decisions she makes for Rosalie’s. "I want to start doing compost eventually, so we're not wasting as much food," she told USA Today. However, she has no plans to change its name or anything else about it. "It's working," she said, "Why change it?"