Free Lemonade Stand with Fresh Lemonade Recipe

Last summer, we did our first internship in Florida. My husband is working on his PhD in mechanical engineering right now, and he is contracted with a fellowship that requires him to work every summer at a certain lab, and then work for them after school as well. We were all excited to explore around our new, tropical home! It was a bit difficult to find a short-term rental that didn’t cost an arm, a leg, a hand, and a foot, but we were lucky enough to get into a large apartment complex with a pool. Even though our complex was large and we were surrounded by a lot of people, it was kind of hard to get to know the people who lived by us.

Brynlee had watched an episode of Daniel Tiger one day, and saw that they had a lemonade stand. She got super excited about that idea and wanted to do one herself! When I asked her if she wanted to charge money for the lemonade or give it to people for free, she decided that she wanted to give it away for free. It of course made me happy that she wanted to just make other people happy with lemonade.

**It wasn’t my plan to make a blog post about our lemonade stand, but I hope it helps you feel like you can do a simple service project with your kids as well! There are a lot of other “stand” ideas that you could do too: i.e. popsicle stand, hot chocolate stand, baked good stand, etc. Brynlee is also 3 years-old, so this is a great service idea for kids young to less young 🙂

To get our lemonade stand started, we needed to make a plan. Brynlee and I sat down and wrote a list of all of the things we would need to make this happen. I don’t have the list anymore, but I’ll give you an idea of things you might need to think about and plan when you want to do your own lemonade stand! We also decided to make some juice from those packets you pour into water.

1. Find out the rules:
   • We needed to ask our apartment complex if it would be okay for us to set up a lemonade stand by our pool. Brynlee and I went to talk to the managers, and they thought it was a great idea! They said that we could totally do it, as long as we weren’t heckling people for money.
2. Determine a day to have your stand:
   • We chose to have ours on a Saturday from about 10:30am-1:00pm.
3. Find a recipe and determine how much lemonade to make:
   • We made two gallons of fresh lemonade, and two gallons of juice.
   • Find a recipe and determine how much lemonade to make: We made two gallons of fresh lemonade, and two gallons of juice.
   • A common lemonade recipe goes as follows:
     • 1 cup lemon juice (5-6 lemons)
     • ½ cup sugar
     • 4 cups water
   • All you have to do is dissolve the sugar in hot water, typically on the stove, and then mix in the lemon juice. You can adjust the amount of sugar to make it taste how you would like it!
4. Figure out and gather supplies: These are things that we wanted to have and do, but you can do more or less than this:
   • Yellow table cloth- we got an inexpensive plastic one from Walmart!
   • Paper or plastic cups
   • Yellow paper and string for a banner
   • Tape
   • Lemons
   • Gallons of filtered water (we got 4: 2 lemonade, 2 juice)
   • Juice packets
   • Sugar
   • Citrus juicer
   • Ice
   • Tongs
5. Make your lemonade: **HERE’S THE RECIPE**
   • Get ready for a nice arm workout! I bought two 2lb bags of lemons, and juiced almost all of them. The lemonade was so tasty, so it was worth it!
   • We used the gallons of filtered water to make our lemonade and juice, and we wanted to do this first, so that we could put them in the refrigerator to get them cold.

We had such a fun time handing out our lemonade! It was a beautiful Saturday and we got to meet so many of our neighbors. Brynlee got to pass out lemonade and talk to different people as well. At one point she got a little distracted and swam in the pool for a little (oh, toddlers). It was really cool to meet these people and find out what they were up to in their lives. One of our neighbors was living at the complex temporarily because his house had caught fire and was under construction. Another was a traveling nurse who went to really cool places to work. We met a little family who had a son Benson’s age, and they were about to leave for South Korea for the husband’s work in the military. Another couple we gave lemonade to worked together in corporate retail, and they travel all over the country working at the different store locations, which are always beautiful and tropical places! They were there for the summer as well, and were about to move to Hawaii next. A family that goes to our church also came with their two boys for some lemonade and swimming. The husband is in medical school and is enlisted in the Air Force.

There are so many people out there doing so many cool things, and we never would have known their amazing stories if we hadn’t had our simple lemonade stand. You really never know what you’re missing when you stay in your comfort zone. It would have been way easier and more comfortable for my introvert self to turn Brynlee’s lemonade stand idea into “pretend play” that we could do inside, but that wouldn’t have taught her most of the valuable lessons that we learned from doing this outside and involving other people. So, I had to get over myself and do something slightly uncomfortable, but it was so worth it.

Our little service idea didn’t cost a lot of money. It was also super fun to get our whole family involved and teach our kids to do something for other people.

If you have any plans to do some service with your family outside in the warmer weather this season, let me know! I would love to hear your ideas.

-Whitney

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