Kids’ lemonade stands are facing the wrath of health inspectors, we say do them anyway
Remember how important you felt running your own lemonade stand – nay, lemonade business – as a youngster? That old folding table in the garage became your very own “store” where you peddled your wares: fresh-squeezed lemonade, or maybe just some grape Kool-Aid.
Sadly, times have changed, and running a lemonade stand is no longer the innocent money-making endeavour it once was. No, pouring your friends cold drinks out of a plastic pitcher for 50 cents a cup is illegal. At least according to bylaw officials in Port Coquitlam, Vancouver. As this National Post article reports, 12-year-olds Mackenzie and Alex were selling lemonade, popcorn and homemade dog treats to raise funds for Mackenzie’s soccer team until some presumably bitter lady with nothing better to do reported them to city officials. The poor little dudes had to dismantle their stand because (and remember, we are not making this up) they were running it without a business licence. Ridic.
We at Bunchland have great respect for the law, but in this instance we say for God’s sake do it anyway. And as a form of protest against the ridiculousness of harshing some kids’ summer fun, we encourage families everywhere to take up wooden spoons and lemon squeezers and head to the sidewalks to sell some ‘ade.
One caveat: please, please put the powdered drink mixes away and serve up something fresh and free of unpronounceable chemicals. Gourmet lemonade is simple to make and tastes better than a cup of weird purple stuff. We have tried this recipe for lavender lemonade from the Happy Valley Lavender Farm of B.C. (ooh, we want to live on a lavender farm). The colour and taste of this lemonade makes it seem like something out of a fairy tale. Your customers will rave about it!
Lavender Lemonade
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup (a generous handful) fresh or 1 tablespoon dried lavender (we bought ours in the spice aisle)
1 cup freshly-squeezed lemon juice, strained
Ice cubes
Lavender sprigs for garnish
Combine sugar with 2 1/2 cups water in a medium pan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
Add the lavender blooms to the sugar water, cover, and remove from heat. Let stand at least 20 minutes (and up to several hours).
Strain mixture and discard lavender. Pour infusion into a glass pitcher. Add lemon juice and another 2 1/2 cups water. Stir well and watch lemonade change color.
Pour into tall glasses half-filled with ice or refrigerate until ready to use.
For extra loveliness, garnish with a sprig of lavender before serving. It doesn’t get any prettier than that.
The best gourmet lemonade stand gear
Lemonade tin sign, $39.99. Recycled cardboard lemonade stand, $94. Citrus squeezer, $4.99. Pitcher, $7.99. Citrus ice cube trays, $9.95. Vintage lemonade labels, downloadable.
it is severe, however i do think there is a distinction between selling lemonade in front of your house from a jug and setting up a food stand in a park that also sells home made hot dogs and pop corn.
This is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time! In response, I think every child in the city should set up an “illegal” lemonade stand this weekend and I will visit every one of them to buy a glass whether I’m thirsty or not!
This outrage falls on the same day that I just wrote a blog article, “STUFF the Stuffing Tax”: http://karynclimans.com/2010/08/13/stuff-the-stuffing-tax/. Hope you’ll visit my article and post a comment. I will be re-blogging and sharing your lemonade stand article on twitter and facebook.
Canadians need to revolt against this nonsense – I wouldn’t object to the taxes, licensing etc if I thought our gov’t was spending the money wisely but they’re NOT!
My girls just did this activity. They had SO much fun and our neighbors certainly seemed to be happily entertained as well. What a waste of taxpayers money to have someone busting up kids lemonade stands.
Forgot to say! Thanks for the recipe, we will be trying it soon.
We quite agree, Karyn!
Don’t know about you guys, but we’re gonna be mixing up some lavender lemonade this weekend. It’s surprisingly simple to make!
I remember seeing the kid at the dog park and I actually mentioned to my wife, “wow, how great, a young entrepreneur who is working toward something instead of sitting inside playing video games or loitering at the mall”. I should also mention that on a number of occasions I witnessed the young man pick up garbage around the park and fill the dog bowls with water – further demonstrating his civic pride over and above his personal capitalist ambitions.
After seeing him on a few occasions I actually thought there would be hope that the entrepreneurial spirit was alive and well and that there were still people that had dreams and were driven enough to work hard instead of asking for a hand out or simply being a cog in the system at some government agency or worse, in real-estate. After all, this kid was doing what Jim Pattison, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet did before him – he was working hard, harming no one, and following a vision, and I might add with little or no help from the system around him.
Of course, I was wrong to think that this beacon of hard-work and determination could last!
But despite my personal feelings I will say that I find it hard to believe that “ambitious” employees of the city of port coquitlam, and/or “highly skilled” RCMP officers used paid time to locate, process the necessary paperwork, and then proceed to shut-down a child’s lemonade stand. The complete shock of this makes me wonder if there is anything sacred. Surely there must be better uses of government employee time – like checking facebook accounts, converging on a local eatery for lunch, or attending a “team-building” seminar.
What I find most shocking is that civil servants managed to find time to shut down the lemonade stand while working inside of a grueling 37.5 hour work week. I pray no civil servants were injured or exhausted with the added work that young Mackenzie caused them.
I end this rant with words for Mackenzie by Henry Ford : ” There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.”- you just survived your first little problem, keep going!!!
Wow! Thanks for the rant Henry. It was appreciated and enjoyed by the folks at Bunch HQ.