How to Have a Lemonade Stand

Does anything else scream “SUMMER” more than seeing a kid sell ice-cold lemonade for a quarter or two?  Okay, besides, sprinklers, and laying out to watch the clouds go by? Well, we’ve had “Have a Lemonade Stand” on our summer bucket list since the beginning of summer, and we finally just crossed it off. Thankfully, it’s basically always summer in San Diego, so lemonade is perfect pretty much all the time.

I was going to show you a whole post about how cute their stand was*, and how they should probably start doing this more often (because it was the easiest $25/hour gig EVER), but when I asked my husband to write up some simple plans for the stand he made, it turned out that he actually wrote a decent blog post.

*For the record. If I set up a lemonade stand it would’ve just been with some boxes leftover from Costco, or just the card table we have out in our garage. My husband is the real MVP here for literally making a lemonade stand from scratch. 

A Lemonade Stand in 5 Easy Steps:

Here’s the thing: we’ve had our lemonade stand ready to go since June, but we’re a bunch of procrastinators (aka lazy parents), and finally decided to say, “yes,” to our kids instead of another, “maybe later.”

So here are his five steps to having a lemonade stand! Take it away, husband!

Step One: Let Them Watch TV

In this case, the girls saw a lemonade stand on Paw Patrol one day, and they decides that selling lemonade would be the best-est thing in the whole wide world.

Pretty much anytime the girls want something, they ask if I can make it for them (to include cars, bicycles, living animals, etc.) so I was happy to build something fun and useful.

Step Two: Get Inspiration

Whenever it’s time for a new project I usually start with Pinterest for ideas. Do you know who has the best pins on the internet? My wife! True story….you should totally follow her.

Anyway, I build a pinterest board with all the possible plans and ideas to see what sticks. In this case I combined a few different styles to figure out what I liked.

Step Three: Make a plan.

I drew a rough sketch on my computer in OneNote, then let Julia and Maddie go to town coloring it.

Once I had the rough dimensions I figured out how much wood to get. I like using wood from Home Depot, because you only have to cut it to length, and it’s ready to paint. In this case I ended up needing:

• 1″x4″ x ~50′ (frame and slats)
• 1″x6″ x  12′ (top)
• 4x casters (wheels)
• 1x box 1 1/2″ screws (screws)
• Paint (3-4 spray cans was enough to cover everything)

Step Four: Build it

Everything is joined together using pocket holes or just screwed together. You also need a saw of some sort, a drill, and screwdriver.

I like pocket holes because you don’t see the screws popping out, but it works either way. The lemonade stand is made up of two “U” shaped frames that are about 33″ long and about 20″ deep. Then you cut all your slats to length and screw them into the top and bottom. Here you can use whatever length you want, and that will be about how tall your lemonade stand is. Keep in mind that adding casters and a top will add another 3-4 inches. I settled on around 34″ tall for everything which was just right for our 5-year old and a little tall for our 3 year-old.

The top is glued together and screwed on top, then you can paint everything and put the casters on. I used spray paint which was easy to apply and coated everything with just a few cans.

Step Five: When Life Gives you Lemons

Be awesome. Once the paint dried, we procrastinated for a few months, and then it was time to sell some lemonade.

We usually make our own, but lemons were expensive this week at Costco. So we bought some premade lemonade from Costco because, you know, premium.

Julia and Maddie drew up a bunch of signs, and they setup shop out in the neighborhood.

These two made a killing, and came away with a cool $5 a piece (after we recouped expenses and a little play money for ourselves). 

Everyone ended up happy, and only slightly sticky from a lemonade spill or two, which counts as a win!

Overall this was an easy project, but we totally could have gotten away with some apple boxes and accomplished the same thing.

Have you had a lemonade stand?

‘Tis the season for lemonade stands! Did your kids have one this year? What’s your go-to method? And are you a homemade lemonade fan, or do you go the easy way out and buy it pre-made?