During our in-class assignment to come up with a game plan to build a lemonade stand business, I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. Throw together some lemonade, put it on a table, and voila, you have a business.
However, things got very complicated very quickly, and then spiraled out of control.
We decided that we wanted to give our lemonade an edge and make it frozen, in order to take a step up against our competition. We first wanted to put the stand on Rye Beach, but then changed our minds to Water Country because it would be a place where there was definitely a market for sweet drinks that would cool you down on a hot day.
We started mapping out our costs with the basics: cups, a blender, ice, lemons, and a stand. Then, things began to get a little more detailed. We would need straws and spoons, because it was frozen, a cooler to keep the mixture cold, sugar to sweeten it, a scooper/mixer, napkins, a lemon squeezer, an umbrella for hot and rainy days, a chair, and then we decided to make our creation even more unique by adding Torani flavor shots to make flavored lemonades.
We realized we would have to come up with a name, trademark it, then come up with a banner and a logo for the stand.
We divided our costs into up front costs, and then daily costs, and worked to do the math to see if we would be under, break even or make a profit. We decided to check out our competition and prices, and figure out our target sales vs. the supplies we'd need.
Along with more things we figured we would have to do before we even began squeezing lemonade, the biggest realization was how much thought and work goes into something as simple as a lemonade stand. It's intimidating, definitely, that something as basic could take that much work, but it also helps to know that we are working from the bottom, and that some basic business strategies work from the bottom up, from the least complicated to the most complicated.
And, if being an entrepreneurial journalist isn't going to work out for me, I have a pretty good game plan to open up my own lemonade stand!
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