Many young people set up one-day lemonade businesses, and the first contest drew a large number of participants.
DOUGLAS — When Enterprise staff came up with the idea to add a lemonade contest to Jackalope Days in Douglas this year, they didn’t want it to just be a sip-and-vote event — they wanted to give kids a shot at entrepreneurship and give it a taste — and that mission was a total success.
Shortly after sunrise on June 8, nearly a dozen young people lined up at the corner of S. 3rd and Oak streets to do business for one day. No two lemonade stands were alike, each one bringing to life the vision of a young person in a friendly competition.
From the themes and catchy slogans to the salesmanship and presentation, each and every lemonade stand was a literal treat, as was the story of how the day came to fruition.
Visitors were delighted with the variety of flavours.
“This was the first time we’d ever done anything like this, and it was a lot of fun deciding how to make it look,” said Alexis Stillwell of Glen Rock, who donned leis and served lemonade and brownies with decorative umbrellas.
Stillwell worked with Spencer Smith to create a tropical lemonade stand that will transport you to Hawaii in an instant.
“It’s fun. She helped me make lemonade and we have some brownies. Do you want some?” Smith asked enthusiastically.
These young entrepreneurs didn’t come up with anything overnight, some took the time necessary to perfect their structure.
“I started thinking about a lemonade stand after hearing about it at Jackalope Days. I started drawing plans and it started to take shape within a few weeks,” says Josilyn Price, who enlisted the help of her friend Tristan Hoffman to help her build the perfect stand.
Like all the other entries, their lemonade stand was impressive: Decked out with decorative lemon-shaped balloons, the place offered cookies, mini donuts, and even a choice of two flavors of lemonade.
“We’ve created two types of lemonade to give our customers options,” Price said. “We have a regular lemonade and a strawberry lemonade with real strawberries floating in it, which is our most popular.”
As the temperature rose throughout the morning, so did my desire for more lemonade.
Guest after guest wandered through the selections, sampling as many as they could before casting their vote.
“It’s good, but a little sweet,” said 13-year-old Kaiden Shutt, who tasted his first sip, which was rimmed with a slice of lemon. “It’s actually good. It’s really good. But I need to try more.”
This story was published on June 12, 2024.
