Teen with Tourette’s Syndrome operates restaurant by himself — and the ‘constant activity is better than therapy’

Most 18-year-olds with Tourette’s Syndrome like Dylan Larson would struggle to hold down a job.

But Larson — who owns and runs an entire restaurant in Michigan all by himself — is proving the doubters wrong.

Larson, now 21, is the sole employee at Rare Earth Goods Café in Ishpeming, taking every order, cooking every meal, washing every dish, and balancing the books.

It’s just him, grinding it out from open to close.

And here’s what makes this story special: The steady, relentless pace and his non-stop hussle seems to quiet his Tourette’s.

“The constant activity is better than therapy,” Larson told The Post. “It’s a lot of work, but running this restaurant is my passion, my dream. I don’t feel like I have Tourette’s anymore.”

Larson has battled the disorder — which causes uncontrollable motor and vocal tics and often floods sufferers with excess energy — since he was 6. Yet instead of letting it defeat him, he’s channeling that energy into 12-hour days. seven days a week at his café he purchased three years ago.

“I knew from when I was two years old, that I wanted to cook,” Larson said.

He works without a stovetop or full-sized oven, relying instead on a small electric griddle, a four-slice toaster and a countertop convection oven. On busy days, customers wait up to 45 minutes for their breakfast and lunch meals.

But they don’t mind a bit.

“We want to see him succeed,” said customer Sue Johnson. “It’s a nice little place. The food’s good. He’s very accommodating to your meal. He’ll do anything any way you want. And he’s local. You like to support your locals.”

That loyalty runs deep: Larson grew up one of three boys raised by a single mom who knew what hunger looked like.

“I’ve been unemployed for 10 years,” said Angela Olin told the Detroit Free Press. “Dylan has gone to food banks with me. He’s gone to food pantries. So to watch him do all this and to give back to the people who gave to us, I couldn’t be more proud. He knew what he wanted and he wouldn’t stop until he got it.”

At age 6, Olin noticed her son was having problems, as “something was different about him. He seemed very agitated. He was making a lot of vocal noises. I blamed it on caffeine, chocolate.”

Doctors later diagnosed him with Tourette’s at age 8, followed by years of therapy.

“I was noisier or a bit more, I don’t know, just louder than other people.” Larson said. “I was like, shouting in class. And when I got excited about something, my first word would be like, yelling at you. Sometimes, it would scare people.”

After a few years of treatments and therapy, he took matters into his own hands.

At 17, he marched down to the restaurant he now owns and asked then-owner Pam Perkins for a job.

“He really, really wanted to cook, but I put him on dishes. He did all the dishes. He’s like, ‘What can I do next? What can I do next? What can I do next?’” Perkins told the newspaper.

His hunger never stopped. When Perkins retired, the two struck a deal for an undisclosed sum.

“At the time, I was working at McDonald’s for 40 hours a week, so I was working 80 hours a week,” Larson said. “But once I got the restaurant going well, I quit McDonalds.”

Today, Larson is in his element, doing what he loves. And he’s got some good advice for other young folks who want to realize their full potential:

“Put your mind and heart into it and never stop believing. That way, you can make your dreams come true.”