7 ms·

You wouldn't know lemonade stands were shutdown if social media didn't expose it. But what it should be is a lesson for cities to adopt a young entrepreneur lic

You wouldn't know lemonade stands were shutdown if social media didn't expose it. But what it should be is a lesson for cities to adopt a young entrepreneur license for like $10/year. There will always be some angry a-hole who will call the cops or HOA idiot whining. My suburbia neighborhood there were people who wanted to share books with people freely in a small mailbox near the curb, like a mini-library. Someone started whining and the city was like "it's illegal to have such a structure" so once it hit the news people went crazy over the stupidity of the cities response. I always stop for the bad lemonade at these stands, even tell these kids how to market better with better signs that you can read. I remember knocking on doors selling vegetable seed packets, shoveling snow and whatever to make a few bucks to really appreciate the dollar. I think it's a great PR idea, definitely a creative video, and everytime they intervene it's another story.

subway 8y ago
Should young entrepreneurs be exempt from health code too? It's pretty fucking rare for lemonade stands to be shut down due to lack of a "business license". They're shut down due to health non-compliance. Whether those health restrictions are too strict or lax has very little to do with the age of the person in or out of compliance.
- sillysaurus3 8y ago
  ...An interesting question, but I'm leaning towards "yes." 1. Our immune systems are pretty good. Much better than is generally appreciated. 2. People usually buy lemonade from lemonade stands to support the kids, not for the taste.
- robhunter 8y ago
  Do you have any sources for what you're saying? I have read dozens of examples of lemonade stands being shut down because of the lack of a business license. I have not read any mentioning health code non-compliance. FWIW - you put water and powder in a large cup with ice cubes, then pour it into smaller cups. Not sure you need a 60 minute health inspection for something like that.
  - cardiffspaceman 8y ago
    You could probably inspect a kid's lemonade stand while standing in one spot. You could have volunteers in red berets do the inspection. I assume there are hygienic ways to dispense Country Time Lemonade and other ways. The differences might not be obvious to an amateur. But we're not talking about dairy or meat or eggs. Country Time should also diagram a model lemonade stand that is simple to set up and safe when operated properly.
    - robhunter 8y ago
      You could, put it's not the way the health department works - I've owned a number of businesses that require a health inspection both at setup and randomly. Takes hours each time with lots of paperwork.
- ams6110 8y ago
  In my town, "concession stands" are exempt from restaurant health codes. Probably that way in many places.
dkersten 8y ago
> I always stop for the bad lemonade at these stands, even tell these kids how to market better with better signs that you can read. I recently had some kids come to my house and sell some crap I didn’t want, but I bought enough anyway so that each kid got a little change from it, to encourage them and hopefully nurture their entrepreneurial spark. I’d happily do this more often but it’s rare to see stuff like that around here.
syshum 8y ago
>>But what it should be is a lesson for cities to adopt a young entrepreneur license for like $10/year. why even $10/yr, why should they even need to ask or notify the government at all? The solution is to repeal the laws that makes these things illegal in the first place
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  This. It shouldn't be too hard to carve out some exception that covers 99.999% of toy businesses run by kids. Normal people doing normal people things shouldn't have to ask the government for permission.
  - syshum 8y ago
    The problem is we have shifted from a society there the government needs to provide a valid, and direct rational public safety reason to make regulations, to one where everything is defacto illegal unless it is explicitly authorized, permitted, and approved by government. that is not a free society, even though most people consider it to be
    - karmajunkie 8y ago
      Uh, no, we haven't. Running a business is a thing that's been debated and found to be something that on the whole should be at least lightly regulated. Businesses that sell goods intended for human consumption are additionally regulated by health codes, for good reason. The fact that a proprietor is a kid is irrelevant to the reasons behind why those codes were enacted in the first place. You can go create a business right now online that sells widgets or services or something without a permit, provided you pay your taxes due on it. The IRS even has a classification for self-employment for that express purpose. If you are selling something that is covered by some other regulation, you'll need to comply with those, but those regulations were also debated and enacted at some point because it was deemed necessary by the legislative body that enacted them. Whether you agree with that body is another issue, but it doesn't amount to "everything is defacto (sic) illegal unless it is explicitly authorized, permitted, and approved by government."
LeifCarrotson 8y ago
> My suburbia neighborhood there were people who wanted to share books with people freely in a small mailbox near the curb, like a mini-library. You mean a Little Free Library? https://littlefreelibrary.org/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/ They have some good tips on the website navigaing zoning rules: https://littlefreelibrary.org/deal-zoning-regulations-spencers-story/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/deal-zoning-regulations-spence...
- creep 8y ago
  We have these all over my city in Canada. I'm not sure if they're exactly Little Free Library. I went to a small town in the country the other day and they had a "pantry" with which you could exchange preserves.
ashelmire 8y ago
I don't think the issue is just one that young people experience. There's an active fight against entry-level entrepreneurship in terms of fees just to start a business that may not be profitable enough (at least in the short term) to justify the fees. I get why some of the laws exist - for food, fear of health risks, for business more generally, fear that taxes won't be paid or people will be inconvenienced by street vendors. But they are onerous and we'd be better off without them, in my opinion. Let people start small businesses and don't require licenses or fees until they make a threshold above a living wage (30k or so / year).
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  I like the spirit. But oh my do food vendors have a perfect front for cooking the books and never making 30k.
  - Turing_Machine 8y ago
    But they can do that anyway, even if they have all the licenses and other folderol.
- ataturk 8y ago
  The problem is that we have become "lawed to death" and I hate that about this country. I know everyone thinks there are legal remedies for every problem, but in a free society, that quickly turns into shackles. We might better live with a few warts.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  >There's an active fight against entry-level entrepreneurship in terms of fees just to start a business This is illustrated well if you peruse the internet fora used by Uber/Lyft/rideshare drivers. Some locations require no licensing at all. Some require just supplemental insurance. Some pile up city/state/local/inspection/insurance fees in the hundreds of dollars just to get started. In Las Vegas, there are annual state and county licensing fees totaling about $225. But a rideshare driver picking someone up at the airport and taking them to MGM, for example, only makes about $3.00 after expenses for what can easily be 45 minutes of time spent (staging + travel + loading + unloading + return to staging). Yes, the problem is really the amount that rideshare drivers make in some cities. But that's a discussion for another time. The point is that all the licensing fees are a barrier to entry for a job that's supposed to be entry-level.
jimmy1 8y ago
You got to remember why these rules were put in place: because assholes and scam artists abused the rules and ran rampant in neighborhoods in the 90s. I remember having to fend them off often times felt like multiple times per day in the summer -- always coming to me with some pyramid scheme, MLM pitch, or simply hounding me to buy garbage I didn't want. Naturally, those homeowners that came before you petitioned their local governments to do something about it, and so now maybe we have overcorrected some and it's time to bring it back to balance.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  I was alive in the 90s. What you describe did not happen anywhere that anyone ever heard of.
  - vorpalhex 8y ago
    I was also alive in the 90s, and can confirm it did. It, in fact, still happens today in places where permit laws are not required or not enforced.
  - wil421 8y ago
    I grew up in he 90s and I can confirm OPs story. I can also confirm we just let dogs outside without watching them or even putting them on a leash.
    - loeg 8y ago
      > I can also confirm we just let dogs outside without watching them or even on putting a leash. As a bicyclist in the 90s... yeah, I remember that. It kinda sucked.
      - dpkonofa 8y ago
        They even made a video game about you where you had to deliver newspapers while avoiding being attacked by unleashed dogs. Remember Paperboy? :)
sandworm101 8y ago
It isnt the jerks who call the cops. It's the jerk cops who listen to them. Like street hockey, this is an area for police discretion, a chance for them to deal with dangerous situations but generally take a hands off approach. That cops abuse that small trust is 100% on them. Want to stop them? Have the mayor give them an award for thier dedicated service ridding the streets of children running lemonade stands. Nobody wants to see that when they google themselves. I walk past a bookshare box on my way to work. Ill post a pic in a coupls hours.
- mistermann 8y ago
  Maybe that could cause the cop to lose his job and pension. With the growing lack of reason and consistency in Western society, almost nothing would surprise me anymore.
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    To do that you need them to break rules. The rules say no lemonade stands. So any sanction needs to come throught public shaming, not anything they could take to a tribunal.
    - mistermann 8y ago
      I am a strong supporter of public shaming, in some cases it's almost become our last hope.
      - kbutler 8y ago
        Shame on you destroying other people's lives! Ha-ha only serious: public shaming, also known as "bullying" in the age of the internet is a growing problem, and is turned to in more and more cases, from the trivial to the non-politically correct. Public shaming in a village context allowed for the possibility of a reboot by moving to the next village. Where's the next village in the age of the internet?
  - loeg 8y ago
Turing_Machine 8y ago
Yep, I always buy the lemonade. I usually surreptitiously dump it out after I've gotten out of sight, but I buy it. :-)
DanBC 8y ago
> But what it should be is a lesson for cities to adopt a young entrepreneur license for like $10/year. What happens when the lemonade stand with a $10 licence poisons people? https://foodsafetyinfosheets.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/6-13-07.pdf https://foodsafetyinfosheets.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/6-1... Death from norovirus is rare, but it does happen. https://www.cdc.gov/features/norovirus/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/features/norovirus/index.html > CDC estimates that each year in the United States norovirus causes 19 to 21 million illnesses, 56,000 to 71,000 hospitalizations, and 570 to 800 deaths.
- loeg 8y ago
  What happens when a lemonade stand with a $300 license poisons people? What distinction are you trying to draw here?
  - learc83 8y ago
    The lemonade stand with a $300 license is inspected several times a year and awarded a health score, and the employees are required to undergo food safety training. They are also running a real business that required a real investment, so they should be more risk averse. I don't know if the risks from kids running lemonade stands is high enough to justify regulation, but presumably all the above makes a business with a $300 license less likely to poison customers.
    - abfan1127 8y ago
      you're buying powdered lemonade from kids. If you can't identify the risks involved in such a process, maybe you shouldn't be doing other things in everyday life like driving...
      - sincerely 8y ago
        I mean, there's a significant amount of the population that isn't capable of passing a driving test but that we as a society still let buy food on their own.
loeg 8y ago
> My suburbia neighborhood there were people who wanted to share books with people freely in a small mailbox near the curb, like a mini-library. Hah. There are hundreds, probably thousands of these all over northwest Seattle. They're called "little free libraries" or something. I don't really see the appeal and have only seen one family checking out the contents of a little library (ever). But as things go, it's harmless.
- moonka 8y ago
  I dropped off a few books this weekend to one, and when I went by a couple hours later 2 out of the 3 were gone. So at least someone is using them!
dpcan 8y ago
We have rules in place for a reason, so we can live in a civil society. Also, in this case, so people don't get sick from drinking contaminated beverages. There are safe places to have a business located, and on the corner of a neighborhood street where bad drivers are cutting corners, texting, and going too fast is NOT one of those places. Sure - there were the "good old days" - but thankfully humans have the ability to learn as time goes on, and to determine what is safe and what is not. HOA idiot? Those idiots chose to live in the neighborhood they live in and pay those huge HOA fees for a reason - so that they can make sure neighbors abide by rules even if there are many rules they don't like themselves. It creates a status quo so everyone can live in peace. My HOA keeps trash cans off streets, RVs from staying parked in front of our houses, junk from being in the front yard, dogs from barking constantly, etc. I've been fined for leaving my trash can out too long. Fine, but I won't do it again. It's also stopping my neighbor from letting his kids drive their ATV on the sidewalks and on our driveways and through our yards. The lemonade stand is a thing of the past because it's just not safe, not a good idea, not a registered business, not policed by the FDA. I get it. I'm such a stick in the mud. But I also think that rules need to stay in place and be enforceable in order to have a civil and safe world for humans to continue to enjoy.
- laretluval 8y ago
  Do you find that the world has gotten more civil in the time interval since lemonade stands started getting banned?
  - dpcan 8y ago
    I have no idea in regards to lemonade stands. But I do think that rules and laws have made for a more civil society, it's just a matter of keeping up with change that's become a problem. More guns, more violence, more media, more tech, more vehicles, more densely populated areas, less law enforcement for the number of people, etc, and so on. We just can't keep up, and if we start dropping rules for the little stuff, that will begin to catch up with us too. We had someone run a lemonade stand in the neighborhood for a couple weeks last year with a sign that said all proceeds were going to support a certain "charity". There was absolutely no oversight to see if that was happening or not, or if it was just a ruse. They sat on the busiest corner. Cars couldn't safely get through. Hearsay has it that they DID shut it down - I'm not sure if it was the HOA or police in this situation though.

subway 8y ago

Should young entrepreneurs be exempt from health code too? It's pretty fucking rare for lemonade stands to be shut down due to lack of a "business license". They're shut down due to health non-compliance. Whether those health restrictions are too strict or lax has very little to do with the age of the person in or out of compliance.

sillysaurus3 8y ago
...An interesting question, but I'm leaning towards "yes." 1. Our immune systems are pretty good. Much better than is generally appreciated. 2. People usually buy lemonade from lemonade stands to support the kids, not for the taste.
robhunter 8y ago
Do you have any sources for what you're saying? I have read dozens of examples of lemonade stands being shut down because of the lack of a business license. I have not read any mentioning health code non-compliance. FWIW - you put water and powder in a large cup with ice cubes, then pour it into smaller cups. Not sure you need a 60 minute health inspection for something like that.
- cardiffspaceman 8y ago
  You could probably inspect a kid's lemonade stand while standing in one spot. You could have volunteers in red berets do the inspection. I assume there are hygienic ways to dispense Country Time Lemonade and other ways. The differences might not be obvious to an amateur. But we're not talking about dairy or meat or eggs. Country Time should also diagram a model lemonade stand that is simple to set up and safe when operated properly.
  - robhunter 8y ago
    You could, put it's not the way the health department works - I've owned a number of businesses that require a health inspection both at setup and randomly. Takes hours each time with lots of paperwork.
ams6110 8y ago
In my town, "concession stands" are exempt from restaurant health codes. Probably that way in many places.

dkersten 8y ago

> I always stop for the bad lemonade at these stands, even tell these kids how to market better with better signs that you can read. I recently had some kids come to my house and sell some crap I didn’t want, but I bought enough anyway so that each kid got a little change from it, to encourage them and hopefully nurture their entrepreneurial spark. I’d happily do this more often but it’s rare to see stuff like that around here.

syshum 8y ago

>>But what it should be is a lesson for cities to adopt a young entrepreneur license for like $10/year. why even $10/yr, why should they even need to ask or notify the government at all? The solution is to repeal the laws that makes these things illegal in the first place

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
This. It shouldn't be too hard to carve out some exception that covers 99.999% of toy businesses run by kids. Normal people doing normal people things shouldn't have to ask the government for permission.
- syshum 8y ago
  The problem is we have shifted from a society there the government needs to provide a valid, and direct rational public safety reason to make regulations, to one where everything is defacto illegal unless it is explicitly authorized, permitted, and approved by government. that is not a free society, even though most people consider it to be
  - karmajunkie 8y ago
    Uh, no, we haven't. Running a business is a thing that's been debated and found to be something that on the whole should be at least lightly regulated. Businesses that sell goods intended for human consumption are additionally regulated by health codes, for good reason. The fact that a proprietor is a kid is irrelevant to the reasons behind why those codes were enacted in the first place. You can go create a business right now online that sells widgets or services or something without a permit, provided you pay your taxes due on it. The IRS even has a classification for self-employment for that express purpose. If you are selling something that is covered by some other regulation, you'll need to comply with those, but those regulations were also debated and enacted at some point because it was deemed necessary by the legislative body that enacted them. Whether you agree with that body is another issue, but it doesn't amount to "everything is defacto (sic) illegal unless it is explicitly authorized, permitted, and approved by government."

LeifCarrotson 8y ago

> My suburbia neighborhood there were people who wanted to share books with people freely in a small mailbox near the curb, like a mini-library. You mean a Little Free Library? https://littlefreelibrary.org/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/ They have some good tips on the website navigaing zoning rules: https://littlefreelibrary.org/deal-zoning-regulations-spencers-story/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/deal-zoning-regulations-spence...

creep 8y ago
We have these all over my city in Canada. I'm not sure if they're exactly Little Free Library. I went to a small town in the country the other day and they had a "pantry" with which you could exchange preserves.

ashelmire 8y ago

I don't think the issue is just one that young people experience. There's an active fight against entry-level entrepreneurship in terms of fees just to start a business that may not be profitable enough (at least in the short term) to justify the fees. I get why some of the laws exist - for food, fear of health risks, for business more generally, fear that taxes won't be paid or people will be inconvenienced by street vendors. But they are onerous and we'd be better off without them, in my opinion. Let people start small businesses and don't require licenses or fees until they make a threshold above a living wage (30k or so / year).

Waterluvian 8y ago
I like the spirit. But oh my do food vendors have a perfect front for cooking the books and never making 30k.
- Turing_Machine 8y ago
  But they can do that anyway, even if they have all the licenses and other folderol.
ataturk 8y ago
The problem is that we have become "lawed to death" and I hate that about this country. I know everyone thinks there are legal remedies for every problem, but in a free society, that quickly turns into shackles. We might better live with a few warts.
reaperducer 8y ago
>There's an active fight against entry-level entrepreneurship in terms of fees just to start a business This is illustrated well if you peruse the internet fora used by Uber/Lyft/rideshare drivers. Some locations require no licensing at all. Some require just supplemental insurance. Some pile up city/state/local/inspection/insurance fees in the hundreds of dollars just to get started. In Las Vegas, there are annual state and county licensing fees totaling about $225. But a rideshare driver picking someone up at the airport and taking them to MGM, for example, only makes about $3.00 after expenses for what can easily be 45 minutes of time spent (staging + travel + loading + unloading + return to staging). Yes, the problem is really the amount that rideshare drivers make in some cities. But that's a discussion for another time. The point is that all the licensing fees are a barrier to entry for a job that's supposed to be entry-level.

jimmy1 8y ago

You got to remember why these rules were put in place: because assholes and scam artists abused the rules and ran rampant in neighborhoods in the 90s. I remember having to fend them off often times felt like multiple times per day in the summer -- always coming to me with some pyramid scheme, MLM pitch, or simply hounding me to buy garbage I didn't want. Naturally, those homeowners that came before you petitioned their local governments to do something about it, and so now maybe we have overcorrected some and it's time to bring it back to balance.

jessaustin 8y ago
I was alive in the 90s. What you describe did not happen anywhere that anyone ever heard of.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  I was also alive in the 90s, and can confirm it did. It, in fact, still happens today in places where permit laws are not required or not enforced.
- wil421 8y ago
  I grew up in he 90s and I can confirm OPs story. I can also confirm we just let dogs outside without watching them or even putting them on a leash.
  - loeg 8y ago
    > I can also confirm we just let dogs outside without watching them or even on putting a leash. As a bicyclist in the 90s... yeah, I remember that. It kinda sucked.
    - dpkonofa 8y ago
      They even made a video game about you where you had to deliver newspapers while avoiding being attacked by unleashed dogs. Remember Paperboy? :)

sandworm101 8y ago

It isnt the jerks who call the cops. It's the jerk cops who listen to them. Like street hockey, this is an area for police discretion, a chance for them to deal with dangerous situations but generally take a hands off approach. That cops abuse that small trust is 100% on them. Want to stop them? Have the mayor give them an award for thier dedicated service ridding the streets of children running lemonade stands. Nobody wants to see that when they google themselves. I walk past a bookshare box on my way to work. Ill post a pic in a coupls hours.

mistermann 8y ago
Maybe that could cause the cop to lose his job and pension. With the growing lack of reason and consistency in Western society, almost nothing would surprise me anymore.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  To do that you need them to break rules. The rules say no lemonade stands. So any sanction needs to come throught public shaming, not anything they could take to a tribunal.
  - mistermann 8y ago
    I am a strong supporter of public shaming, in some cases it's almost become our last hope.
    - kbutler 8y ago
      Shame on you destroying other people's lives! Ha-ha only serious: public shaming, also known as "bullying" in the age of the internet is a growing problem, and is turned to in more and more cases, from the trivial to the non-politically correct. Public shaming in a village context allowed for the possibility of a reboot by moving to the next village. Where's the next village in the age of the internet?
- loeg 8y ago

Turing_Machine 8y ago

Yep, I always buy the lemonade. I usually surreptitiously dump it out after I've gotten out of sight, but I buy it. :-)

DanBC 8y ago

> But what it should be is a lesson for cities to adopt a young entrepreneur license for like $10/year. What happens when the lemonade stand with a $10 licence poisons people? https://foodsafetyinfosheets.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/6-13-07.pdf https://foodsafetyinfosheets.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/6-1... Death from norovirus is rare, but it does happen. https://www.cdc.gov/features/norovirus/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/features/norovirus/index.html > CDC estimates that each year in the United States norovirus causes 19 to 21 million illnesses, 56,000 to 71,000 hospitalizations, and 570 to 800 deaths.

loeg 8y ago
What happens when a lemonade stand with a $300 license poisons people? What distinction are you trying to draw here?
- learc83 8y ago
  The lemonade stand with a $300 license is inspected several times a year and awarded a health score, and the employees are required to undergo food safety training. They are also running a real business that required a real investment, so they should be more risk averse. I don't know if the risks from kids running lemonade stands is high enough to justify regulation, but presumably all the above makes a business with a $300 license less likely to poison customers.
  - abfan1127 8y ago
    you're buying powdered lemonade from kids. If you can't identify the risks involved in such a process, maybe you shouldn't be doing other things in everyday life like driving...
    - sincerely 8y ago
      I mean, there's a significant amount of the population that isn't capable of passing a driving test but that we as a society still let buy food on their own.

loeg 8y ago

> My suburbia neighborhood there were people who wanted to share books with people freely in a small mailbox near the curb, like a mini-library. Hah. There are hundreds, probably thousands of these all over northwest Seattle. They're called "little free libraries" or something. I don't really see the appeal and have only seen one family checking out the contents of a little library (ever). But as things go, it's harmless.

moonka 8y ago
I dropped off a few books this weekend to one, and when I went by a couple hours later 2 out of the 3 were gone. So at least someone is using them!

dpcan 8y ago

We have rules in place for a reason, so we can live in a civil society. Also, in this case, so people don't get sick from drinking contaminated beverages. There are safe places to have a business located, and on the corner of a neighborhood street where bad drivers are cutting corners, texting, and going too fast is NOT one of those places. Sure - there were the "good old days" - but thankfully humans have the ability to learn as time goes on, and to determine what is safe and what is not. HOA idiot? Those idiots chose to live in the neighborhood they live in and pay those huge HOA fees for a reason - so that they can make sure neighbors abide by rules even if there are many rules they don't like themselves. It creates a status quo so everyone can live in peace. My HOA keeps trash cans off streets, RVs from staying parked in front of our houses, junk from being in the front yard, dogs from barking constantly, etc. I've been fined for leaving my trash can out too long. Fine, but I won't do it again. It's also stopping my neighbor from letting his kids drive their ATV on the sidewalks and on our driveways and through our yards. The lemonade stand is a thing of the past because it's just not safe, not a good idea, not a registered business, not policed by the FDA. I get it. I'm such a stick in the mud. But I also think that rules need to stay in place and be enforceable in order to have a civil and safe world for humans to continue to enjoy.

laretluval 8y ago
Do you find that the world has gotten more civil in the time interval since lemonade stands started getting banned?
- dpcan 8y ago
  I have no idea in regards to lemonade stands. But I do think that rules and laws have made for a more civil society, it's just a matter of keeping up with change that's become a problem. More guns, more violence, more media, more tech, more vehicles, more densely populated areas, less law enforcement for the number of people, etc, and so on. We just can't keep up, and if we start dropping rules for the little stuff, that will begin to catch up with us too. We had someone run a lemonade stand in the neighborhood for a couple weeks last year with a sign that said all proceeds were going to support a certain "charity". There was absolutely no oversight to see if that was happening or not, or if it was just a ruse. They sat on the busiest corner. Cars couldn't safely get through. Hearsay has it that they DID shut it down - I'm not sure if it was the HOA or police in this situation though.