First Taste of Business

Well, it was a fantastically beautiful day yesterday in Pittsburgh. Dare I say, the weather was perfect. I was in a pretty good mood, I didn't have to make my normal Saturday run to the restaurant, and the house was pretty clean. So, I finally gave in to the request that Chloe has been making since January.

The Lemonade Stand.

Chloe has been asking me at least once a week since JANUARY if she could have a lemonade stand outside. When I explained that people don't really want to buy lemonade when it is snowing outside, she offered up the idea of a hot chocolate stand. Well, although that would have worked a bit better, I held her off. There was a weekly lemonade stand inside my kitchen. She would get her small folding chair, and set up the cups and kool-aid on one of the stools for our island. She had three very regular customers...me, Tony and Becca.

They had some very grand hopes for the outside lemonade stand. As I cleaned up, I had them draw some pictures for the lemonade stand. We ran a couple of errands, and then came home to make the lemonade (instant, of course!). The plan was to set up their 'Cafe' tent:

We figured that we would cover up 'Espresso' with 'Lemonade.' Easy enough. I head out to the driveway and start setting up the cafe. The frame went up just fine. After a couple of tries (and Becca holding down part of the tent), I got the cover on. Then, it was just like one huge box kite. Since I didn't necessarily want the children flying through the sky through our plan, I nixed the cafe. After taking it down and putting it away, we set up our small plastic table and chairs from Ikea. That worked just fine. They had the ice, the lemonade and the cups. They even put out their gumball machine. Price? Two coins. Yeah, any coins. Although Becca is now realizing that different coins are worth different amounts, Chloe hasn't quite reached that level. So, I asked Becca to just 'go with it.' She also thought that she was going to make $1,000.

They sat there for about five minutes with me being the only customer. I told them that nobody knew they were there...they needed to let everybody know that they were having a lemonade stand. They did great! First, Becca walked down to the stop sign (just past our neighbor's house) and stood on the corner holding up a sign that said 'Lemonade' and had our address on it. Then, she used her loud mouth skills. Every car, every person that she saw definitely knew about the lemonade stand.

They got some customers, and then Chloe headed out for her turn at the marketing. It was very cute. The whole ordeal only lasted about an hour and a half, but they had fun. And they realized that just because you open shop, that doesn't mean you will have a ton of business. I told them what I do for the restaurant, and part of it is making sure people know what's going on, and where we are. Now, they sort of get it.

As a side note, I just started book 7 of 8 from the Sookie Stackhouse novels. I'm loving this series more and more! It is cutting into my snooze time a little, but it's worth it! I'll report on the entire series as soon as I'm done :)