12 Creative Ideas to Host a Lemonade Stand

Here come the lazy, hazy days of summertime.  Also a popular time for the kids to get “bored”. It helps to have a few activities to suggest up your sleeve, preferably a few multi-task activities to spread out through the day.

Holding a Lemonade Stand is just that kind of layered activity. It takes a little bit of preplanning to move it from a 10 minute experience to a daylong neighbourhood memory.  Having a lemonade stand should be inexpensive to run, reuse as much as possible from around your home and be a great project to do with your children that also has a ton of hidden learning within it. Not just a boredom buster but a brain teaser as well!

Basic Set Up needed for a lemonade stand:

• Cups – disposable or plastic reuseable. Disposable is easier but less green, up to you, just avoid anything breakable.
• Use a pitcher that your child can easily pour out of or one of those jugs with a spout.
• Paper towel/ wet wipes for spills (there will be many!)
• Garbage can (I almost forgot this and we certainly needed it!)
• Mint from the garden or ice cubes are a bonus
• Signs / Chalk board for prices, menus, lemon fun stuff!

Our 12 tips to take your lemonade stand from sour to sweet!

1. Create and Decorate
Plan ahead and get your kids busy crafting for your stand. By no means must it be Martha Stewart / Pinterest worthy, but some creativity is both fun and good for the lemonade business. The more organized and pretty the stand looks, the more likely people will stop to congratulate your child on their creative venture. And the more pride they will have in the experience
A couple lemon ideas momstown had:

Bright Paper Plate Suns  – perfect to hand from the stand or behind on the garage.

Tissue Paper Lemon Sign – allows everyone to create their own sign, get personal with their own text and tissue paper lemon.

2. DIY Signage
In a world where we can press PRINT so easily, the handwritten sign is almost extinct. It’s summer after all, kids have the time and still need to practise their literacy skills. Create easy Cardboard Signage from old boxes, give them a fun paint job out back and write on them.  Or pull out the chalk board and have your child write a menu.

3. Spread the Word!
Get on facebook, momstown, email or even put up a little flyer in the neighbourhood and invite your friends and neighbours down for a certain time. Even the most keen kid will lose interest if there’s no traffic for their stand. With a little local social media love, our lemonade stand turned into a spontaneous neighbourhood gathering and saw 40 people in an hour. The busier that table is the better and allow all the kids a chance to work the stand.

4. Dress up!
It’s always fun to dress up with a theme – dress in yellow, wear yellow and gold Hawaiian leis or crazy hats. Do make sure kids are covered in floppy hats and sunscreen too. Or you could create a mini temporary tattoo table or use yellow facepaint to give all ‘customers’ a yellow lemon on their cheek.  With yellow leis and funky yellow glasses my daughter was crowned the "Lemonade Princess" during our event!

5. Serve Lemonade

Uh, obviously.  Don’t stress about this part. Homemade squeezed lemonade is fun but far more appreciated by adults who can sip it slowly in summer cool mason jars. Kids will guzzle and spill at your lemonade stand, don't waste the effort.  Don’t sweat it, just buy the lemonade.

6. Mix it up
A lemonade stand could be in name only with a bunch of line extensions! Coconut Lemonade Gelato,  Lemonade Raspberry Slushies over ice or Tropsicles like frozen Tropicana lemonade in popsicle holders are fabulous lemonade focused ideas which will both delight and surprise your stand customers.

7. Hidden currency lesson
Whenever money is involved, it can be a math lesson. This activity is a hidden math lesson in all the fun of lemonade. Make coin organizing easy with a coin sorting activity to split out the different coins. We used a veggie tray to label the coins – fantastic mid-summer brain tease.

Expand the Fun at the Lemonade Stand
Your friends all have their lemonade – now what? We have a bunch of super fun ideas to create additional fun and

8. Lemonade Chalk Party: old fashioned driveway chalk drawing, see who can draw the prettiest lemonade “picture” (pun intended)

9. Lemonade Photo “Booth”: Have the kids stand in front of a yellow towel and pose for the camera with their most sour face. To make it more realistic – give them a lemon wedge to suck and get a REAL live sourpuss face!

10. Invisible Ink Drawings: bring a little science into the fun with lemon juice painting or writing. Use a cotton swab to dab away and leave in the sun, then the juice will turn brown and show the art.

11. Lemon Shakers: Great idea for the musical lemonade drinkers – fill empty water bottles with fun yellow items that make a noise when shaken like beads or dry unpopped popcorn. Glue the top down, decorate the bottle and have a lemon shaker parade around the street!

12. Lemon  Bowling: line up the empty lemonade cartons or empty water bottles and roll lemons to knock them down.  Such innocent fun idea for wee youngsters.

Enjoy your next Lemonade Stand!