get your fresh lemonade
Ever since we moved to this neighborhood the girls have been bugging me to do a lemonade stand because all the other little girls here have done one. I’ve always been on the fence, but Mike has consistently given a resounding NO to the request. The Johnson’s little Alyssa has also been wanting to have one, and her mom was more up for the idea but didn’t feel her own neighborhood had enough traffic to make it worthwhile.
So we joined forces and let the kids have their own lemonade stand on our cul-de-sac this week. Julie came well-prepared with poster boards and lemonade mix in 2 flavors. I provided the pitchers, water, ice, and cups. The kids were so excited but really had no plan. Julie and I stepped up and showed them how to make their signs and get all the “equipment” set up outside. Once they were all set up and had been given a lesson on how to attract “customers” and how to follow through a transaction from start to finish we let them have at it.
Julie and I expected that the kids would lose interest quickly, but we were completely wrong. They stuck with it from 1:30 p.m. until around 5 p.m. when they finally ran out of both flavors of lemonade. There were even repeat customers. The kids were great salespeople. Any time they saw a potential customer they would start yelling, “Get your lemonade!” over and over. They even chased down the FedEx man who eventually gave in and purchased a cup. Julie and I used up all the ice trying to keep the lemonade cool, so we felt bad when we thought about all the late customers drinking their lukewarm lemonade. Yum!
When all was said and done the kids had made $25 from the day’s sales split four ways to $6.25 for each kid. As a bonus, Julie and I baked some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that the kids also sold later on. We had hoped that this experience would teach the kids a little bit about the hard work that goes into making money. It’s doubtful that that lesson was completely taught, but maybe a little sunk in.
When it was time to make signs the kids just starting drawing randomly all over the poster board, so Julie and I had to quickly take over and give pointers.
Ready for the first customer.
The first customers. The kids had to be given another tutorial on how much to fill the cups because an inch high didn’t seem to please these customers.
I’m glad that the girls finally got to do this. I was hoping that once they did it that the novelty would wear off and I wouldn’t hear about it anymore. No such luck. The next morning Annie asked if she could do another lemonade stand because she had so much fun “making money”. I explained to her that it was a one-time deal, and she was okay with that. Whew!