My 8-Year-Old Daughter Started a Business on Friday with 1k in Revenue this Weekend

The story looks great until I found some serious red flags in the execution phase.

So here is the actual story.

Ideation

“My daughter has been begging me to help her set up a lemonade stand as she saw some older kids across the street try one for a few days. She is very insistent on pushing me to help her.

As hot as it has been in my state I felt like it was a perfect time to try an idea I’ve had in the back of my head. Let’s take a really simple concept and add a slightly different twist to it.

A frozen drink / Lemonade stand because it’s hot. Also, who doesn’t like frozen drinks?

I have access to many frozen drink machines so I brought one home and put it on a cart with wheels. I literally put these machines, a folding table and a beach tent over her for shade.

The Supply Chain

I found a supplier that will sell me 40 flavors of drink mix for 1 penny per fluid ounce when reconstituted with water. I work in logistics so I was able to get the price down to the bare minimum. I’m going to take this as serious as my own business. We are going to fight tooth and nail to get this down to a science.

(Contracted with a co-packer and their inhouse formulas, Bought enough to fill out a pallet, shipped to a warehouse with a dock to avoid a liftgate fee and loaded my van to store in my garage.)

Costs were this — $23 per case of concentrate x 60 cases for a pallet. $150 for shipping. =$1,530 in concentrate costs. Selling a cup at $2 per cup we have $19,000 worth of product at that price point.

Machine was free but you can get a good used one for 1,200–1,500 per machine.

Cups were 14.49 for a 250 pack of red cups. $43.47 total for 3 bags.

Marketing

3 hand drawn signs that were taped on to some abandoned yard signs from a roofing company. My daughter colored a bright and aesthetically pleasing sign advertising frozen drinks just down the block from a very busy street in a major city. There was no way to get lost.

The Chaos

From Friday-Sunday she sold 512 cups of frozen drinks sitting in my driveway. For a total of $1024 in revenue.

The Joy

Watching my daughter count out over 1k in cash was amazing. She was begging me to quit summer camp so she can work the stand everyday. I am so proud of her and watching her confidence grow. She was already asking me if I could get her a second machine but I told her to see how next weekend goes.

My take on the story

I was under impression that the idea of a “lemonade stand” was for kids to learn the basics of the business.

Not the road to profitability.

If as a parent, you are doing EVERYTHING for your child and then for them to just show up and enjoy the outcome, it is a wasted opportunity.

Just let the children make the decisions.

Let them struggle for a bit.

As a parent, I want to teach my children to become resourceful, not just give them all the resources and watch them count the money.

This is not how business works.

This is not how the world works.

Next thing you know, your children become adults and expect VCs to do everything for them.

This guy didn’t teach her the value of money and hard work, he taught her that if she doesn’t turn $1k on her opening day she’s a failure.

P.S.: Feel free to share this blog with fellow startups and VCs that want to enjoy investment and startup stories.

May the force be with you!