ICE COLD LEMONADE HERE!
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The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
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TRANSCRIPT:
So when I’m in the classroom teaching marketing classes, one of my favorite exercises is to have students flex their marketing muscles by helping fictional business owners improve their potentially very bland and boring everyday businesses with marketing. Dry cleaners, produce stands, accounting firms, lawnmowing businesses, espresso bars… we cover it all!
And I’m often surprised at the great ideas students come up with for expanding market opportunities, seeking out new customers, building out new product lines or services or even finding new ways to sell. We go way beyond, “this business needs a social media account” and much more into the realm of, “this business needs to reconsider who its customers actually are and find new and better ways to serve them.” I love it.
Sometimes, if we have time, I tell the story of my first business, which I started when I was 9 years old, selling lemonade for a quarter a cup and, believe it or not, actually making a bunch of money doing it. Now, there are some wrinkles to this story. First of all, I didn’t have to cover my costs or make my product because my mom and Country Time lemonade mix did that for me, as my mom loves to point out to this day. Fair point.
Second, I had a pretty unique situation because I lived on a military base next to the fifth hole of a busy golf course, so I just happened to have a great location where officers with disposable income and an appreciation for enterprising children were happy to part with a quarter to help me out.
Third, and this is really important, I didn’t come up with the idea myself. In fact, I modified a lot of it from the idea of another friend of mine who was also named Sean, and I’ll happily give him some credit and explain how his idea got me going in the right direction.
So, here’s the story of my childhood lemonade stand, from boom to bust, and also some of the ideas my students have suggested about how a modern lemonade stand might be able to improve its own business with good marketing. If there are any enterprising kids listening, this show’s going to get you on the path to success!
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
I see lemonade stands pretty regularly in my own neighborhood, and if I have any cash on me, I’m happy to stop by and contribute to the cause. But all too often, I see kids making the same mistakes over and over – they set up a table outside their house in a low traffic area, they price their product inappropriately for the quantity, they don’t hustle people into their stand to boost their sales and they only take cash because, well, most kids don’t have any ability to take credit cards.
I’d guesstimate that in the modern world, kids could probably make $10-20 selling pity glasses at a dollar a solo cup, which isn’t really a great return on what is often going to be hours of sitting out in the sun hoping people will stop by. And a lot of those stands I see are one-time events, though I occasionally hear stories about kids pulling in more because they pick a good location, they commit to more days of selling or because they luck into some success because an adult helps them out by posting on social media.
I had to learn all those lessons too. Let me tell you my own story, which takes place back in the year 1989 and began with my friend Sean, who was very interested in golf. His house faced the golf course and golfers would sometimes hit balls into the neighborhood. Sean would go retrieve them and then polish them up and sit at the shelter at the sixth hole and sell them for a dollar apiece. He kept a collection of specialized monogrammed golf balls he’d find and he’d sometimes part with those for a few bucks if someone wanted one.
I sat with Sean a few times and admired his business. I even helped him collect golf balls. But I didn’t like golf enough to want to be out there for the hours he’d put in, and I also recognized that he had a supply issue – when he ran out of balls to sell, his selling day was done. He made some decent money, but there wasn’t a lot of ability to expand on what he was doing. Golf was also a seasonal sport and the course was busiest in the summer.
So our military base neighborhood had hundreds of families living in it, and a lot of them had kids who were bored and looking for something to do. It’s not surprising that one day, several of us came up with the idea to start a lemonade stand near one of the playgrounds where a lot of kids congregated. We pulled out a toy picnic table and set up shop, but we were quickly confronted by the fact that kids didn’t have any money and could easily go into their houses to buy lemonade. We were hoping to catch the military parents, mostly dads, during the lunch hour, but most of them didn’t have time to stop at a lemonade stand when they came home for lunch and besides, they weren’t thirsty.
So, as some of my friends got bored and wandered away, I suggested that we move our table closer to the golf course. We were afraid of going up to the hole because kids weren’t allowed on the golf course, so we positioned our table near the edge and shouted at the golfers as they’d walk by. A few walked over, but others told us we should just move up by the hole. By the end of our first day, we had and we sold enough lemonade at a quarter a cup that we had a box full of quarters to share.
I was excited to have made so much money, and so I was out there again the next day, this time positioned at the entrance to the hole and armed with the supplies needed to last most of the day. Most of my friends who’d sat with me the day before weren’t interested in spending another day sitting out there, and so I took in the lion’s share of the profits. I was excited to realize I’d made several dollars from a fairly easy endeavor, and more than that, I’d had fun doing it.
And so I spent many days that summer selling lemonade, and I adapted my friend Sean’s idea and sold golf balls too. His mom got mad at me for stealing his idea and so I invited him to join me when he wanted to and also made sure to tell golfers about him – I didn’t think of him as competition.
My mom also would make cookies and wrap them up for me to sell. These didn’t go over quite as well as the lemonade and taught me the value of having the right product in the right place – lemonade was a good fit for a hot day midway through the first nine holes, and it was cheap. Cookies were a little more indulgent, and the chocolate chips were messy in the hot sun. So I phased them out eventually.
Unfortunately, I had a big mouth as a kid, and so I started bragging about my success, particularly after I spent my profits on a bunch of GI Joe toys I showed off to my friends. And so other kids started trying to sell lemonade on the golf course as well, leading to increased competition. I had the edge because I lived closest to the hole, and my main competitor was a kid whose dad was the block captain.
Basically, on a military base, this is like being the head of the HOA, except this guy was a lower rank than my dad and enjoyed being able to exercise his authority against an officer’s kid. So he decided, when I kept beating his son to the spot, that he was going to shut down all lemonade sales, and that was the end of our selling season.
My family wound up moving before the next summer, so I never got a chance to try again. But I took a lot of the lessons I learned into my future babysitting and lawncare businesses I ran as a teenager and, quite honestly, my adult life. And there are really three things in particular I mention to kids who are interested in being enterprising.
The first thing is to understand the value you’re providing. Lemonade is a pretty lousy product to sell in a neighborhood because it requires people to have money in their pocket or pity in their hearts. Even on a hot day, it’s not very valuable.
But if you can position that lemonade stand to make it more valuable – maybe pick a location where lots of people talk their daily evening strolls, or put it near a park where there are more pedestrians, or offer some sort of service to go with it, like a drive-through for cars or sealed up to go jugs of homemade fresh lemonade, or something like that – your chances of making some money go up.
The second tip is to figure out how to draw people in and keep them at your booth long enough to get them to buy. This means doing more than just sitting at a table and waiting for people to come by and see what you’re offering. That approach will only attract the curious or the kind. You have to convert the other people as well from indifference to interest.
When I see neighborhood lemonade stands, I generally don’t stop by unless I have the time, but if the kids put in a lot of effort to attract my attention, I’m more likely to make a stop. This can include putting up signs, making a little bit of a spectacle with dancing or sign-waving, or even just shouting in chorus, “would you please buy some lemonade?”. Energy is infectious, and if you want people to stop and check out what you’ve got, you have to put the effort in to making them feel like you’re doing something special.
The third tip is to show up more than once and to be willing to stay open for awhile. If I see a lemonade stand in the neighborhood and I have time to stop by, I do. But often, I’m seeing them when I don’t have time or cash available. I’m more likely as a customer to drop by the second or third time I see the stand because then it’s not a snap decision – it’s something I planned into my day.
Impulse buying only really works when it’s convenient, and a lot of kids don’t really understand that when they set up shop and generally don’t have the attention span or confidence to keep things going. But if you plan to be there for people to make a more intentional decision to stop by day by day, you can attract more business over time – regulars who drop by to check in, people who make a point of carrying cash the next time they’re on a walk, and curious parties who want to see why these kids are so determined to keep making sales.
There are plenty of other things you can do, too. Putting up posters or flyers around the neighborhood will bring in sales, and having kids ride around on bikes or scooters and serve as a street team shouting at people to check out the lemonade stand to draw customers in will also help, especially if it’s in an easy to find location. Having an adult post on social media may draw in more destination customers coming to offer their specific support, and hyping up your stand’s hours for the day before you start can also get people jazzed.
But here’s the most important thing – don’t quit. Figure out what works and then keep iterating on your design until you find a plan that really works.
And take the time to learn from your customers. Maybe those people stopping by the lemonade stand are less interested in hydration than they are in supporting local kids, so take some time to build relationships and find out what other services they might want. Lemonade’s a seasonal business, but there are lots of other year-round services enterprising kids can offer, like pet sitting or dog walking or pulling weeds in a garden. I’ve heard about kids baking cookies and packaging them and delivering them for holidays or special occasions to their neighbors, and I’ve also heard about kids doing dirty jobs like cleaning out trash cans, washing cars or cleaning out garages for extra money.
Building relationships with your adult customers to find out their actual needs can create an opportunity for more business down the road – and take it from someone who did it, that kind of work is really rewarding once you have a few customers who want to support your desire to work hard and make some honest money.
I do want to mention, of course, that kids and parents need to be aware of local laws and regulations and that there’s definitely a fine line between kids going into business for themselves and kids being exploited.
Kids should always have a responsible adult watching them and ensuring that they’re safe and also ensuring that other adults aren’t taking advantage of them or putting them at risk.
My mom was definitely my behind-the-scenes partner for my own lemonade stand, but even today, she is glad she invested her time and trouble to help me because it not only got me out of the house for awhile and gave her a break, but it also helped me develop a lifelong passion for working hard to earn my own way.
And that is way more valuable than any money I made along the way!
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
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