On Saturday my daughter ran a lemonade stand with her friends in the neighborhood. About 6 kids were in on the action. One did cartwheels while holding a sign to attract attention. Others ferried ice and water and cups to the stand. It was an amazing operation. The day was terribly hot and they ran the sale all day with the goal of having a pizza party with thei earnings.
They made more than $42.
It was a fantastic success. We all couldn't have been more proud of the kids who worked out the details and put together a very clever operation. The oldest among them was 10. One of the parents had a lemon tree and near the end gave the girls lemons to sell, 3 for a dollar.
The signs were crude and the lettering small and poorly contrasted with the cardboard, but they picked a terrific location - a busy two lane street with plenty of room for cars to pull over, and their enthusiasm and energy was obvious just driving by.
We held the party that evening at a local pizza place. There, the kids got a lesson in how fast money can be spent. Two pizzas and three drinks ran $36 and the rest of the money was fed into the video games. The conclusion was that take out pizza from Dominos would have been 1/3 the price.
At the party, the discussion came around to the best location for the kids next lemonade stand. I suggested right outside the local laundromat. Here are my reasons:
1. People have to sit around at the laundromat. You have a captive customer base.
2. It's hot because of the dryers.
3. There's nothing to do at the laundromat except watch horrid weekend daytime TV. Socializing at the lemonade stand would be so much nicer!
4. The customers already have cash or have access to change machines inside the laundromat.
My bet is that they could easily triple their earnings.
Please visit this week's Carnival of the Capitalists for more posts on, well, capitalism!
Technorati tags: profit business kids
4 comments:
Wow! Great idea! My mom says when she was in college--and spending tons of time at the public laundry hell-hole, she would have LOVED some lemonade!
This is VERY COOL! I am very encouraged. My four sons have been doing their lemonade stand for a couple years and take it pretty serious now. They hope to make several hundred dollars this summer with their business. Here is a link to their lemonade stand design and how they got started.
http://www.familycapers.com/Projects/default.html
We don't have a laundromat... And even if we did it would be filled with bad people because were in a bad neighborhood...
Cool! I love this idea. But I don't know how to do this if we have a virus around...
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