Living the American Dream

It was a hot and humid early Thursday afternoon, like a sweatshop. What better thing to do on an afternoon than to put the kids to work. Good thing Child Labour Union didn't come around.





Free Lemonade for sale! Sold by two kiddies.
Tips welcome.
It was marketing at it's finest, and most simplistic.

Liam has been asking to have a lemonade stand for a long time. It was hot outside and thirst was in the air. And we saw one kid standing out on a corner with a big sign taped to his chest. "Alex's Lemonade". He looked like he'd been working hard and very little to show for it. But still Liam wanted to do his business.

In hindsight I guess we should have made a bigger sign since the two boys are still pretty small and you could easily miss them driving by. Which is why we told them to yell and wave. And it worked. It's how they flagged down customer #1 in a nice shiny BMW, and the UPS guy even got a sip. One really nice girl even ran in the house to get money to get a cup. But one generous kid gave them 5 bucks for a cup!

This lemonade wasn't the instant juice crystal lemon flavour chemical carcinogen junk. This was real stuff, lemonade made the old fashion way. With lemons and sugar and water. Chilled in ice water and sold by two kids trying to look as cute as possible to sell a product where the only intrinsic value is being immortalized on this blog, which is worth at least 50 cents.

It was Liam's Lemonade Stand.
Employee number #1 - Kieran.
One sales guy working the street and one guy pouring the lemonade into cups. It was a partnership destined for financial success. They got along better than when they play. No arguments over toys or debates on water sources, just focus on making customers feel good and making the bottom line happy.

They made their sign and taped it to the table and set up shop out in the hot NJ sun, cooking for 1 hr.
At first Liam wanted to sell each cup for 25 cents. His goal was to make $3.00 USD. At that rate they'd have to sell 12 cups to make his target. Minus the cost of the lemons, cups and site rental fee.
Instead, Chris recommended they market it a little different instead of asking for 25 cents per cup. Make the lemonade for free and have the customers leave a tip at their discretion. In 1 hr, they had 4 customers and they exceeded their target by over 300%. It was brilliant. Imagine if they had the little sister out there helping, but then they'd have to split it 3 ways. Not worth the arguments.

Towards the end, Kieran suggested that they start saying that they are closing soon, to encourage the customers who are on the fence to get a cup before it's no longer available.
The two young entrepreneurs made $9.14 USD before packing it in. Well employee #1 quit because he was hot and tired, Liam wanted to stay out there, and someone needed to pick up the little sister from school.

They are living the dream, it was priceless.

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