By Anna Skinner
On National Lemonade Day, Stone Parker decided he wanted to do more than just learn about running a business.
Stone, 6, registered online for the Indiana National Lemonade Day Organization, which exists to introduce children to entrepreneurship, and his mother sat down with him to determine what he wanted to accomplish with his business.
“We thought this would be a great experience for a 6-year-old kindergartener on how to make money and how to start a business, so we sat down and talked about all the aspects on what it takes to start a business,” Allison said. “We let him plan everything out, what kind of lemonade stand he would want, how to make it different from others and how to market.”
Stone implemented three aspects into his lemonade stand to make it different from other stands. He made fresh-squeezed lemonade, as he is allergic to different food dyes and powdered lemonade has some of those dyes. He created the lemonade out of fresh lemons, simple syrup and water.
Stone also created a drive-thru with his lemonade stand so people didn’t have to get out of their cars. And he also donated a portion of his sales to Matt Cooper, a Carmel High School junior battling leukemia.
“The third aspect was how to give back to the community,” Allison said. “Matt Cooper lives down the street from us, so Stone decided he wanted to give a portion of his proceeds to the Cooper family to help with that.”
Stone raised $200 for the Coopers.
“We look forward to doing it again next year. We had a lot of people ask if this would be an annual thing,” Allison said. “They really liked to come to support Matt Cooper and Stone and his business. We had a few people order a few more glasses because they liked the fresh-squeezed lemonade so much.”
