Reports of kids’ lemonade stands being shut down for breaking local health or permitting laws have long left grown-ups feeling sour. Now, a growing movement of adults is fighting back, The Wall Street Journal reports.
One such group of parents started in Denver two months ago, when the Guffey family set up a lemonade stand in a park. Six-year-old Ben manned the cash register. Four-year-old William recruited customers. Two-year-old Jonathan sampled the product.
Then the police showed up, telling the boys they needed three separate permits for their stand.
The incident spurred their mother, Jennifer Knowles, into action. She founded advocacy group Lemonade Stand Mama, started a petition to change local laws and been interviewed on national TV. She hopes to publish a book.
“I want to make it safe for our kids to have lemonade stands without breaking the law,” she says.
Another group, a libertarian nonprofit in Missouri, has mapped reports of forcibly shuttered stands to raise awareness; its litigation director says lemonade stands are protected by the U.S. Constitution.
A Texas-based youth-entrepreneurship nonprofit, Lemonade Day, is lobbying local health departments to change regulations. And a drink maker has offered to reimburse young offenders for up to $60,000 in lemonade stand permits and fines.
“We should give children a few years to experience a free market and the joys of entrepreneurship before they feel the crushing weight of the government come upon them,” says Connor Boyack, president of Libertas Institute, a Utah-based libertarian think tank.
The enemy, activists say, is a hodgepodge of local rules and regulations. Among those encountered by Steven Gordon, president of Lemonade Day: You need three sinks on site. Minors can’t accept money. Stands must have three walls. Local health officials say they are looking out for consumers’ safety and protecting customers from unsavory food-preparation techniques, but parents are saying let kids be kids.
