Teams make lemons into cold cash for Food Pantry

Juan A. Navejar Jr.

Running a small business can be a learning experience and rewarding is what some Alice students found out during this year’s Lemonade Day with a portion of the proceeds being donated to the Alice Food Pantry.
Ten teams competed in the Chamber’s Lemonade Day sponsored by First Community Bank and Texas Champion Bank on Saturday, May 20, 2017.
“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. “We had some great kids out there doing their best with their small businesses.”
Together the young entrepreneurs sold more than $2,800 in lemonade, cookies, and other sweets. Each team had to sell the primary lemonade as their main product with a donation of $1,193 being donated to the Alice Food Pantry.
“We had several unique flavors from the traditional lemonade to watermelon 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.  
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,” Navejar 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, 20 percent was donated to the Alice Food Pantry and the rest divided equally among team members 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.  
This year we awarded first, second and third place medals to the teams. The first place team were the Lemonaders - Jacob Delon, Mark Esparza, Abelino Benavides, Jr, Briggs Hoffman, Noah Gonzalez and Christian Anguino. Second place were the Sassy Limonadas – Trayla Bueno, Emma Radle, Kaity Goldman, Liana Garcia, Belle Contreras and Lyandra Salinas. Third place were the Jr. Lemonaders Team 2 – Natalie Jimenez, Arazelie Jimenez, Annisa Gonzalez and Zander Urrutia.
Awards were also given for Best Tasting and Best Decorated Teams.
 
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!