Lemonade Stand: Earn Some Extra Cash With A Cold Drink Stand

You can become a junior entrepreneur in your own backyard or your neighbors selling snacks and cold drinks to hot and weary garage sale shoppers and lawn workers. Here’s how to run a for profit lemonade stand.

The best scenario is for you to work in conjunction with a planned and advertised event. When a neighbor or parent or grandparent is holding a garage sale you can get in on that by asking if you can set up a lemonade stand on the premises. This setup also provides safety factor because adults will be there with you when strangers stop.

Your first step after finding the date and location of the sale is to tally up your cash to begin shopping for the stand. When you have determined the amount that you want to invest, it is time to go shopping. Invest in food and supplies at the best prices you can find in order to make the most profit.

You will need these things:

• A table
• Lawn chairs
• Poster board and markers for making a sign
• A plastic tablecloth
• A pitcher with a lid
• An ice chest and ice
• Small plastic party favor toys or miniature parasols on toothpicks
• Sweetened drink mix
• Plastic drinking cups
• Straws
• Balloons
• Bottled water
• Canned soda
• Prepackaged snacks (Homemade cookies in sandwich bags or Little Debbie Snack Cakes™)
• Change in a safety box
• A notebook for record keeping

Times have changed, and you are not likely to make much money with lemonade sales alone, but add some pizzazz by inserting the little paper parasols into the straws before serving, by cleaning everything well, by offering a bargain, by adding freebies, and by decorating your stand tastefully.

Perhaps the garage sale operator will let you give away free books or small toys that he wants to get rid of with each of your customer’s purchases. Used magazines, church flyers, bookmarks or balloons for little ones make good giveaways and draw traffic.

Setting Up:

Set up your table and chairs under a shady tree or porch awning near the garage sale site, but away from the driveway. Cover the table with a plastic tablecloth. Hang up your poster board sign where it can be seen easily. Decorate with the balloons. Be sure to post prices.

Keep your stand as inviting as possible. Keep the tablecloth clean and keep yourself combed and clean too. You want to look professional.

Pricing it:

Post your prices and make them inviting too! You might try charging thirty cents for a small glass of lemonade. Forty for one with a decorated straw. The canned sodas and bottles of water should be priced only ten cents over your price, after all, they don’t cost you any extra. Figure the price of the treats by your cost plus a few cents per item.

Serving it up:

Pre-cool all the drinks and keep the ice in an ice chest (clean!) behind the table. Use a scoop for dipping the ice into the cups. A nice plastic tumbler will work well.

Float ice and maybe even a fresh slice or two of lemon in your pitcher. Be sure the pitcher looks clean inside and out and has a good, tight lid.

A bouquet of flowers on the table will spruce it up. Keep a fly swatter hidden under the table in case of an invasion. Keep the snacks dry and cool inside the cooler. Put out only a few at a time.

Place free items clean and neat in a small basket on or by your table for people to look through.

Welcome people to your stand. Remember, you are providing a service to hot and weary garage sale shoppers. Be kind, patient and generous. Smile and be friendly to all customers.

Settling Up:

Tally up purchases in your notebook. Give correct change. Afterwards, be sure to clean up the stand and area and also to thank your hostess. Figure your profits by totaling your sales and subtracting your expenses.