‘Nostalgia! 50 Cents a Cup!’

To be fair, they were ace marketers — they immediately began shouting, “Lemonade, 50 cents a cup” at the top of their little lungs — but I suspect that location may have had more to do with their success than advertising. We set up the stand across the street from our house, in front of a community center with a park and heavily used basketball courts. On that busy corner, their lemonade sold out in less than half an hour. Their business was so popular, so quickly, that they didn’t have to do much to make their money — in fact, they didn’t even have to sell lemonade …

If my children’s experience is in any way representative, lemonade stands are joyfully embraced by adults but they don’t teach entrepreneurship. My kids’ clientele didn’t act like typical customers: They didn’t compare the price and quality of my kids’ lemonade to the price and quality of the lemonade being sold by other kids a few blocks over. They didn’t haggle. And that was the problem. Rather than encouraging an understanding of the value of money and hard work, my daughters’ customers taught them that all they had to do was show up.

In Slate, Michal Lemberger argues that lemonade stands doesn’t actually teach children about capitalism and entrepreneurship because people just like giving money to children.

Which: true, at least in my own experience so far this summer buying lemonade or limeade from the children in my neighborhood (I preferred the limeade). I liked the idea of business kids more than having a Solo cup of sugary lemon water. Plus, they have to deal with the man sometimes, which isn’t very fun.

Photo: Steve Gasser

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