The Lemonade Stand

Mateo was twelve and his brother Lucas was ten, and they both wanted the same thing: a new bike. Not two bikes, just one, which they promised to share. It was red, it had twenty-one gears, and it cost three hundred and forty dollars at the bike shop near their house in Atlanta. Their parents said it was too expensive. However, they also said that if the boys earned half of the money, they would pay the other half.

"A lemonade stand," said Mateo. "Everyone is thirsty in July." In order to start as soon as possible, they spent all their savings, twenty-three dollars, on lemons, sugar, paper cups and a big plastic jug. Their dad helped them build a stand out of an old table, and Lucas painted a sign: LEMONADE 50 CENTS.

On the first day, they sold six cups. On the second day, they sold four. Although their lemonade was good, almost nobody walked past their house. Besides, it was ninety-five degrees in the afternoon, so the few people outside hurried from their cars to their air conditioning. After a week, they had made eleven dollars, which was less than half of what they had spent. "We're losing money," Mateo said sadly, looking at the numbers in his notebook.

Their grandmother, who had run a small restaurant for thirty years, listened to the problem and asked three questions. "Where are the thirsty people? When are they thirsty? And what else do they need?" There was a park at the end of the street with a basketball court and a trail around a lake. Early in the morning, before it got too hot, it was full of joggers, dog walkers and kids playing ball.

So they changed their strategy. Instead of sitting outside their house in the afternoon, they moved the stand to the entrance of the park and opened at seven in the morning. They added ice so that the lemonade stayed cold, and they started selling bottles of water as well as lemonade. Lucas had the idea of putting out a free bowl of water for dogs, because, as he said, "Dogs can't pay, but their owners can." They also raised the price to a dollar, even though Mateo was afraid that people would complain. Nobody did.

The results were amazing. On their first Saturday at the park, they sold eighty cups in three hours. By the end of the month, after paying for lemons, ice and cups, they had made a profit of one hundred and ninety dollars, which was more than enough. Despite the heat, they had worked every day except one, when it rained so hard that even the joggers stayed home.

Their parents kept their promise, and in August the boys finally bought the red bike. Lucas rode it first, because the dog bowl had been his idea. As for the stand, they didn't close it. Instead, they started saving for something else: a second bike, so that they would never have to share again.