Lemonade Stand
ALEMONADE STAND is a great way to earn a little spending money and meet your neighbors. What you need:
Lemonade, in a pitcher or large thermos
Lemonade and brownies are a classic combination. Baking brownies from a box is quick work, and we’ve included recipes for other treats as well.
Crafts are good, too—perhaps friendship bracelets, which you can work on between customers. You might also devote half the table to a mini yard sale, and sell odds-and-ends you’ve outgrown. This is where the card table’s size comes in handy.
RECIPES FOR YOUR STAND
Lemonade
If you want to squeeze fresh lemons, here’s the basic recipe, which yields 4 cups. You can see that making enough fresh lemonade for your stand will entail much lemon-juicing time.
Mix together by hand or in a blender, adjust sweetness, and serve over ice.
Alternately, you can make lemonade from frozen lemonade concentrate, available at the grocery, or from dry mix. There’s nothing wrong with these not-from-scratch options, especially if the idea is to get out to the street and sell some lemonade, not stand at the kitchen counter all morning juicing lemons. Follow the directions on the can or bag. You can always cut some thin lemon slices, and add one to each cup of lemonade you pour.
Lemon Candy Straw Treats
To make this old-fashioned treat, push a lemon candy stick (these are hollow inside) into the open side of a lemon that’s been cut in half. The combo of the tart lemon and the sweet stick is perfect. To make this treat from a whole lemon, use an apple corer, lemon juicer, or a sharp knife to make a hole for the candy straw. You can also use oranges or limes.
BAKED GOODS
Shortbread makes an excellent and unexpected addition to any full-service lemonade stand, as does fudge. Both recipes are incredibly easy, although fudge will take forethought, as it needs two hours or so in the refrigerator to become firm.
Shortbread
Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Cream the sugar and butter. Measure in 2½ cups of flour, and mix thoroughly. Flour a tabletop, counter, or wooden board with the leftover ½ cup of flour, and knead until you see cracks on the dough’s surface. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick, and cut into squares, bars, or any shape you wish. With a fork, prick the cookies, and put them on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 45 minutes, until the tops are light brown. You can also add almonds, hazelnuts, or chocolate chips to the dough if you like.
Fudge
Melt the chocolate with the condensed milk, either in a microwave for 2-3 minutes, or on top of the stove. The chocolate should be almost but not entirely melted. Stir, and the chocolate will melt fully. Add vanilla. Line a square pan (8 inches is a good size) with wax paper, and pour in the chocolate-milk-vanilla mixture. Chill for two hours or more if needed, until firm. Cut into bars or squares.
CALCULATING YOUR PROFIT
If you are working your lemonade stand to save up dollars for a Swiss Army knife or a special book, you must understand how to figure out how much you earned—that is, your profit. Let’s say you make the expanded-version lemonade stand. From the sale of lemonade, fudge, and three Beanie Babies, you earned $32.
First figure the profit, using this standard equation:
Revenue (money taken in) minus Expenses (food, drink, etc.) equals Profit
Revenue: You sold 30 cups of lemonade and 20 pieces of fudge, charged 50 cents for each item and earned $25. Plus, someone paid you $7 for those Beanie Babies your great aunt brought for your second birthday. At the end of the day you took in $32.
Expenses:
| 3 cans of frozen lemonade | 2.50 |
| 38 plastic cups | 1.50 |
| fudge ingredients | 2.00 |
| Total Expenses | 6.00 |
Now plug the numbers into the equation: 32 minus 6 equals 26. You cleared $26 in profit.