Capitalism at work

A year or so ago, I wrote one of these articles about the world's oldest profession—selling lemonade by the roadside. I said that lemonade stands had been around for a long time considering no one ever made any money at them.

Well, one set of my grandkids from another town in Utah have forced me to rethink my position. In fact, they have proved me wrong. Of course they live across the street from where certain events like marathons, charity walk/runs, long bike rides and artist's walks, etc., are held in their town. Sometimes the events end there and sometimes they begin there. Sometimes they are just on the way.

Those events attract a lot of people from all over Utah and beyond. In fact, sometimes there are hundreds of participants. So the kids are fortunate enough to have a good location for their proprietorship, which, as you know, makes all the difference.

And they have a good recipe. They don't make yellow Kool-aid. In fact they have perfected a recipe for an easy-to-make, but high-end, Brazilian lemonade. I would pass it on if I knew it, but it is a secret and there are proprietary laws after all. They do offer an additional menu item—an economy lemonade which is more like your basic lemon-sugar-and-water recipe.

A local restauranteur tasted their wares, finished his glass, and then came back for more. Ostensibly. He really came back to quiz them about their recipe. Before they realized who he was, they had spilled the lemons. They are pretty sure that he will have their drink on his menu next time they go to his restaurant, but they don't think he will be letting out trade secrets either. They still refer to that incident as the “great lemonade recipe heist.”

So the kids can sell quite a bit of lemonade when the runners end a marathon at their location.The same is true for bike competitions. And artist-walkers love to sip and saunter.

So, the other day they had everything—a hot Saturday, a marathon, and an artist's walk all at once. They really had to scramble to keep the lemonade coming.

Their next door neighbor, who only sells bikes, came by for a glass and wondered what the kids were going to do with their profits. He thought perhaps they were doing some kind of benefit like coming over to buy a new bike tire, or donating their proceeds like the artists were doing. The 12-year-old assured him that all of the proceeds were of a capitalistic nature and would be used either to buy more lemons or more Legos.

“All of the money we make will be going to the 'ade' of lemons.' Get it?” the 9-year-old put in tartly. And they did have to send Dad on a lemon run sometime during the afternoon.

So finally they ran out of customers and lemonade, and they moved inside to count their money and pay Dad for the production materials. After all the bills were paid, they were left with profits in the amount of $119.30.

They probably netted more than the bike retailer did that day, considering that a lot a marathoners and not many bikers were milling around.