Free Lemonade!

For a year or so, my daughter Naomi has been on a crusade to run a lemonade stand. She was convinced that she was going to make tons of money. I on the other hand was convinced it was just going to be one more thing I would have to supervise without the pay off she was expecting. I was not thrilled with the prospect. 

Some years my husband and I will go out to Indianapolis for a giant game convention called GenCon. This year we decided that Victor was old enough to come along and actually enjoy himself. Victor was quite excited. Part of the deal though was that he had to raise $35 to help pay for his 4 day badge. Suddenly letting them run a lemonade stand didn't sound quite so bad. 

After a lot of mulling it over we  decided that we would offer our product for free. We put out a tip jar for those who have a burning desire to give kids money but we literally gave away many cups of lemonade completely free. 

The whole thing turned into a social experiment of sorts. It was really interesting to see how different people reacted. There was no catch, just a free cup of lemonade. 

 In the beginning I had my children commit to one full week before we would call it quits. Monday - Friday 11:30 am-1:00 pm they would stand out there pestering everyone who walked, biked, skated, or drove by. At the end of the week we would discuss whether they wanted to keep it up. 

In the end we ran the stand for approximately 6 weeks total. 

I think the lemonade stand has been a fantastic experience for learning so many life lessons. 

My family and I sat down and discussed what they learned from out summer lemonading. Here are some of what my kids said and what I have observed. 

• They learned confidence and skills for approaching strangers. ( Yes, I am well aware of "stranger danger" but I don't completely buy into the way our society handles it. Let's face facts, your whole life you will have to interact with people you don't know initially, thus they are automatically strangers. I firmly believe that teaching them appropriate methods for dealing with strangers is more valuable than terrifying them of the world.)
• Perseverance-There were stretches of time or even days when few people stopped and things were simply not as much fun, but you just keep going.
• Customer service skills. ( I would not say we have portion control down yet though.)
• Saving and investing money. Each child had a goal set for their portion of the earnings. They also decided on a specific amount they took out for reinvesting in supplies. I gave them the money initially to get started. However, once they had earned that much money I was repaid. 
• Record keeping. They were given a ledger to keep track of the earnings. The younger children needed more help tracking. Victor became very good at adding up his money and calculating how much tithing needed to come out. 
• Shopping around for better prices. They quickly realized they got far more for their money at Aldi than they did anywhere else. 
• Putting on happy face. It didn't matter how the customer reacted, you smile and tell them to have a nice day.
• Be a part of what is going on. They had to be actively engaged. Passively sitting in a chair waving a sign around does not encourage anyone to stop. 
• Team work. Each child seemed to find a little nitch in the system. 
• Focus. (Let's just say that Phebe and Caleb served more as a focus challenge than actual help.)
• Everyone gets a chance. Every person that came near was given the opportunity to accept. There was no way to tell who would stop and who wouldn't. As Caleb, age 5, said "You have to ask everybody because you can't see the ideas in their heads." 
• Charity (OK, that is probably mostly just me. We have a few children in the neighborhood who seem to lack in much parental supervision so they came to visit us 2-3 times daily in our hour and a half. The selfish part of me just wanted to hand them a cup and send them on their way, but they obviously were craving attention so I had to work seeing them as God sees them.It was a good challenge for me to have.)
• They also became far better at accepting responsibility for setting up and cleaning up the stand. 

It was interesting to see how different people reacted to our little set up. Some grin, others wave, a few seem embarrassed and won't make eye contact with you. This has been a really impressive opportunity to become better acquainted with our neighbors. 

We live right near a hospital and down the street from an ambulance station. As such we ran into interesting people like the man with a broken hand who stopped to chat for a while. Or the woman who was on the way to the hospital because her young child had stuffed a bead up her nose. We understood that the bus and emergency vehicles weren't really going to stop, but they were called to anyway. The kids were stunned when an assist coach (some kind emergency vehicle) stopped and gave them several dollars saying  " This is for all your hard work guys." That was after 3 weeks of yelling at them to stop. We had a police officer, nurses on break, men who tried to get their dogs to drink a cup. It literally is impossible to tell who will accept their offer. 

(If you were to decided to run a stand I highly recommend buying frozen cans of lemonade from Aldi. I had a surprising amount of people ask what our recipe was because it was so good.) 

I am so glad that we chose to run a lemonade stand, OK maybe I am glad I gave into my daughter's hounding. It has been a really positive experience. They are already plotting what they are going to do next year. They are also looking for suggestions for during the school year. (They want to do hot chocolate but that sounds like a logistical nightmare to me, especially with a new baby that will be here.)

I hope you had a fabulous summer.