Beth Thames: The summer lemonade stand

Holland Ray, Collier Watson and Brooke Parker at their lemonade stand

This is an opinion column

It’s one of those passages of childhood—the summer lemonade stand. it seems quaint now, a vestige of old fashioned summers where children played jacks, hide-and-seek, and kick the can. Screen time was eating popsicles on the porch, not staring at a computer screen all day.

A thousand summers ago, my friends and I set up lemonade stands on our mothers’ card tables, then our children did the same, and their children did, too. Lemonade stands came with summer, like mosquito bites and stinging sunburn and grass stains on white shorts.

And lemonade stands have endured. I pass by two or three of these tiny, independent businesses almost weekly, now that school days are counting down the time on the calendar and letting children know it’s now or never. They meant to set up shop earlier, but it was too hot or they were at camp or nobody wanted to do it until it was almost too late.

So what do you need to have a successful lemonade stand? A safe neighborhood, one that’s pedestrian-friendly. A parent —usually a mother—peering out the window to supervise from a distance. People with a few dollars in the glove box of the car and a few minutes to spare before they go on with their day.

You need snacks to go with the lemonade. (The entrepreneurs I spoke with served chocolate chip cookies and bags of goldfish crackers. It’s tempting to eat the merchandise, but they try not to.)

You need a table of some kind covered with a splashy cloth and a big pitcher for the lemonade. You need a cash box and—this was new to me—a tip jar. The fourth graders in my neighborhood were willing to work hard, to sit in the sun for hours, and to make signs to inform customers about the menu offerings, but they wanted to make money, too, and they hoped for a small gratuity. Or, even better, a big one.

The tip jar was full when I went by, but I added what I could.

The businesswomen I talked to set up their shop a few days ago. Business was going pretty well. And what had they learned, I wanted to know.

“How to please the customer,” one of them said. “How to make delicious, icy cold lemonade,” another said. And what if no customers stop by?

“You learn that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade,” said the third businesswoman, who also told me they had a plan for the money they were making. They were saving up to start a “slime store” and already have a website out there.

They have a business plan, then, which is what most executives start with. They’re working as a team, so they learn about profit-sharing, team-building, and how to keep siblings away from the independent business establishment they’ve started on their own.

And what about the competition they face when it’s almost triple digits and the oven of an Alabama summer wraps around the neighborhood? They’re not worried about that, they said, and went back to pouring lemonade for a new customer.

They won’t know it for a very long time, but this day will be a summer memory they can share with their children and grandchildren one day, people not yet imagined or alive. By then these businesswomen will have wisdom to pass on and advice about living as best you can even when life gives you lemons as it surely will from time to time.

Contact Beth Thames at [email protected]

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