Young entreprenuers squeeze lemons for cash

Juan A. Navejar Jr.

Young business entrepreneurs went to the Alice streets to sell lemonade and products and sold a little over $6,000 in three hours during this year’s Lemonade Stand Day sponsored by First Community Bank and Texas Champion Bank.
Seventeen teams competed in the Chamber’s Lemonade Stand Day this year.
“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 $6,321 in lemonade, cookies, and other sweets. Each team had to sell the primary lemonade as their main product with a donation of $1,325 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 Stand 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 was SES Squeezies, Second Place St. Joseph Saint Squeezers Third Place The Sweet Spot. 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!
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.