“Yay, they got it!” Blake exhales deeply. “I think I’ll get five or six bags. It would have been a disaster if they hadn’t had it.”
Lemonade stands used to be just for kids trying to make some extra cash on summer vacation. Now, people in their twenties and thirties across the country have started squeezing lemons to pay their bills. They set up stands at farmers’ markets, local festivals and concerts. Owners say it’s very profitable, but the business is highly dependent on the weather and has a lot of competition.
Blake, 26, said she has about $40,000 in debt from student loans, credit cards and a car and is pursuing a law degree.
“The cost of living is pretty high and I have a lot of expenses,” said Blake, who lives in D.C. and works in corporate communications. “I’m constantly looking for opportunities outside of my 9-to-5 job to fund my debt and my future. Rivets are cheap. I thought I could do this, too.”
In May, she spent $1,500 on coolers, an industrial lemon cutter, a banner and other materials. She scoured the Internet for places to set up a booth. Malia’s Main Squeeze hosted its first event on Mother’s Day at a farmers market.
It rained.
“I didn’t have much traffic. It was discouraging, but I wanted to give it a chance,” Blake said.
But at their next event a week later, the weather was warm and sunny, and people were lined up for a cold, refreshing drink. Soon, their calendar filled up with events in June, such as the Taste of the DMV food, music and culture festival in downtown DC.
Blake says she makes $1,000 to $1,500 in sales per event. She sells her lemonade for $8 a cup and offers it in five flavors: watermelon, mango, strawberry, hibiscus and plain. It takes her about a minute to make a cup.
After one of her events, Blake put together some video clips of herself making lemonade at her booth and posted them on TikTok to tell people about her new venture to pay off her debt. The video was viewed more than 520,000 times. Then another lemonade video reached 1 million views. She started selling a $3 guide to starting a lemonade business after receiving so many questions about it.
In July, she booked her first private event: TikTok hired her to distribute her lemonade to employees of its DC office
“The support I’ve gotten in such a short amount of time has been insane. I post where I’m going to be and my TikTok followers come to me for lemonade,” she said.
Blake started her point of view after coming across a TikTok in which Elizabeth Williams talks about how she is funding her pharmacy degree with the profits from her lemonade business.
Williams, who lives in Owensboro, Kentucky, runs her mobile lemonade stand out of an old horse trailer that she purchased and refurbished on Facebook Marketplace.
The 23-year-old runs her business from April to August, putting on events throughout Kentucky and parts of Tennessee and Indiana. Last year, she made $80,000 in sales, she said. She said she makes between $2,000 and $10,000 per event. She hires six to eight employees, mostly students, to help her with events. She was able to pay off a small student loan and uses the income she earns during the summer months to cover her living expenses during the school year, she said.
“The profit margins are really great. Since there’s no alcohol, you don’t have to deal with a lot of licenses or permits,” Williams said.
She knows what goes through some people’s minds when they hear about her company.
“We’re not taking away the kids’ lemonade stand,” she joked. “Sometimes the simplest business ideas are the best.”
Williams has also become a lemonade influencer. After gaining 50,000 TikTok followers by posting behind-the-scenes videos of her Liz Loves Lemonade stand, she began selling an online course on how to start a lemonade business. She gets paid for her TikTok and Instagram views and affiliate links and has a branding deal with a lemonade company. She said she made six figures from social media last year.
