Lemonade stands squeeze funds for Food Pantry

Juan A. Navejar Jr.

Alice has some young business minded individuals was discovered in its first Lemonade Day.
Twelve teams competed in the Chamber’s Lemonade Day sponsored by  First Community Bank and Texas Champion Bank on Saturday, May 21, 2016.
“I was amazed by the outcome and how these young entrepreneurs flourished in promoting and selling of their products,” Chamber Executive Director Juan Navejar said.
Together the young entrepreneurs sold more than $3,500 in lemonade, cookies, popcorn, pickles, fruit cups etc. Each team had to sell the primary lemonade as their main product.
“We had several unique flavors from the traditional lemonade to strawberry and kiwi as well as pink lemonade. The students got very creative,” Navejar said.
Lemonade Day is a community-wide educational program that teaches youth the entrepreneurial skills needed to start and operate their own business – a lemonade stand.
“We wanted to do this to give our young citizens a chance to be a part of our business community while teaching them how to run a small business, “ Navejar said. “Mayor Ike Ornelas was very instrumental in kicking off this campaign.”
The Alice program targeted students in grades third to sixth.
“We wanted students in these grades because we know they are starting to learn the value of money and are curious on how businesses operate,” Mayor Ornelas said. “We are blessed to have two local banks take charge in sponsoring this event.”
The teams of three were given $50 courtesy of our bank sponsors to purchase, promote and sell their products with lemonade being their chief product. The students returned to the Chamber at 1 pm to cash in their sales. From their sales, 10 percent was donated to the Alice Food Pantry and the rest divided equally among the team as their profit.
The teams had to turn in a fill-in-the-blank Business Plan provided by the Chamber as part of their participation.  
 
Lemonade Day was founded when Lissa, Michael Holthouse’s daughter asked her dad to buy her a turtle. When Michael drew a line in the sand expressing she had enough pets, Lissa decided to open a Lemonade stand and purchase the turtle with her own money. Michael, a successful entrepreneur, soon found himself offering Lissa numerous tips to make her lemonade stand a success. He quickly realized the tips were valuable business lessons that she could apply to any entrepreneurial situation. As a result, Michael was inspired to pour the same principles for success into other youth and empower them to realize their entrepreneurial dreams: Lemonade Day was born!
Since its inception, Lemonade Day has provided access to the experience of business ownership to youth from all walks of life. They learn business skills and principles which follow them into adulthood. Whether they become entrepreneurs or not, the life skills learned from this experience help develop strong community leaders. From that very first Lemonade stand in Houston, Lemonade Day now has over 150,000 youth across the U.S. and Canada participating each year.
Goal
The goal of Lemonade Day is to give children of all socio-economic backgrounds, in all neighborhoods, the opportunity to start their own business and learn how to make money where they are encouraged to ‘spend a little, save a little and share a little.’
As most new business owners, Lemonade Day entrepreneurs usually have a goal for what they want to do with their money. For some it may be to go to summer camp. Others want to help a classmate who is sick. Some youth want to buy something. Thus they spend, save, share model.
Mission
The mission of Lemonade Day is to empower today’s youth to become tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.