Diy Lemonade Stand Ideas, Plan, Built And VIDEO
Our girls had been asking to do a lemonade stand for a while and so I knew I had to make it happen for them this summer. My goal was to build a stand that was soooo cute that the passerby’s simply had to stop, and that is quite literally what happened. There were multiple times when we had two and three people waiting in line. With every customer, the girls became more excited and more confident in their skills. This has been an absolutely terrific way to introduce them to the concept of working and money. On the first day, we were open for a little over an hour, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes and we made $105. On the second day, we weren’t even open for an hour because it was too hot and we made $85. The third time we were open we made $51 in about an hour. Which has given us the ability to talk about money with them and have them start to grasp an understanding. “Oh, you want a new bike? That bike costs $150 and so that would cost more than what we made the first day of the lemonade stand.” We’ve also been clear that the lemonade, cups, silly straws, and wood, all cost money. Making the stand was a lot of work but in the end it has been worth far more than what I had expected.
We’ve only been able to work the stand three times during our busy summer break, but I’ll keep doing it with the girls as long as they want to and as long as the weather is warm. But what I really want to do is a slight stand makeover so we can sell hot chocolate this Christmas!
Insanely Cute
Yes the stand is cute, but my girls are also insanely cute and them in their little lemon dresses, waiving at everyone is a sight to be seen. They were so purely excited with each and every customer, almost not to make money, but just that people were coming to see them.
Lemon Dresses
I found these adorable dresses from Hannah Anderson, sadly they don’t have them anymore but they were absolutely perfect and the fact that I found an umbrella to match made me overjoyed, LOL.
The Plan
I started doing my lemonade stand research on Pinterest of course and I came across this photo of a little girls play store front and I fell in love. I modeled the look of the stand after it, adding lemonade details of course and I just love how it turned out. I drew this little sketch for Daddy and then we were off…
The Build
The build itself only took him 2 days total. One entire Saturday and then other little bits of time here and there. What took the longest was the sanding, staining, and clear coat drying. All in all, I’d say it took us about two weeks from start to finish, of course thats working during naptime, laundry, and other work. Our little helpers could barely contain their excitement.
Stain
I stained the wood with Minwax Harvest Grain (yellow) and Simply White. Then we did one clear coat using this Cabot deck sealer. Dean has a paint sprayer so he sprayed the clear for me.
The Necessities
There are a few things you must have for a lemonade stand; lemonade, drink dispenser, cups, straws, and a cash box. I purchased all of them from Amazon and I also added an ice bucket to hold our lemonade ice cubes.
The Upgrades
This was the gold mine; the silly straw upgrades. I’d say 90% of our customers upgraded their straws and that’s where we made the most money. It was $1 for lemonade and an extra $1.50 for a silly straw so that’s $2.50 for one drink and most people got two so that’s an easy $5. The citrus Italian candies were another fun idea and my oldest actually came up with giving candy away if customers were buying a lot of lemonade… it also was good to give away when our friends came up and wanted free lemonade, we gave them free candy instead.
Country Time For The Win
Costco had huge tubs of CountryTime Lemonade for sale for only $10 and so I scooped them up. We went through roughly three dispensers of lemonade with each stand opening, along with 8 trays of lemonade ice cubes, which equaled HALF of the giant container of powdered lemonade. I had to mix it stronger than recommended, because duh, tasty.
The Money Taker
The money was Ava’s job. I worked with her beforehand on all the money details and we practiced what people might order and she blew me away the first day. I made colored labels to help her identify the coins and while she can’t make change quite yet, I could tell her, “ok, give them two quarters and one dollar back” and she was able to do it. She was so incredibly proud of herself and that was a wonderful thing to experience.
Lemonade Ice Cubes
I always make myself coffee ice cubes and so thinking about what would elevate our “product”, I knew that lemonade ice cubes would do it. Everyone LOVED this, and it gave Hadley a job that she was incredibly proud to do. Our stand wasn’t just cute, our lemonade was delicious and not watered down!
Us: “our ice cubes are made out of lemonade”
Everyone: “whaaaatttt?!?! WOW”
The Profit
Like I mentioned in the beginning, so far we’ve made $241 and we’ve never had the chance to be open on a weekend. With the cost of building materials, that income doesn’t quite cover the cost to create the stand but even if it never does, the learning lesson was far worth it. Also the kids love playing with the stand too so it will bring days and days of fun, not just money.
Signage
I used my Cricut and my Glowforge to make all the signage for the stand. If you’d like to use my pre-designed decals, first login to Design Space, then click this link to be taken to my canvas where you can personalize the elements as you’d like! I used fonts Sweet Summer and Goldwind.
Hot Chocolate Next!
I seriously can’t stop thinking about overhauling the stand to sell hot chocolate this winter! I am fully aware that I’m a little crazy but I have never seen a hot chocolate stand before, have you?
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DIY Tutorial Credits
Photography + Lemonade Stand + DIY Tutorial + Video: Jen Causey-Kidder of Something Turquoise // Minwax Stain: Lowes in Harvest Grain and Simply White // Lemonade Signage created in: Cricut Design Space // Girls Lemon Dresses: Hannah Anderson, now sold out // CountryTime Lemonade: Amazon // Yellow Striped Umbrella: Amazon // Rose Gold Drink Dispenser: Amazon // Crazy Straws: Amazon // Italian Candies: Amazon // White Drink Cups: Amazon // White Cash Box: Amazon // White Ice Bucket: Amazon
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