[derfclausen]

When I think of a good ol' fashioned lemonade stand, I think of kids picking lemons and mixing up a big pitcher of homemade lemonade. In this article, the main photo shows kids selling bottled drinks and putting cash in a strongbox.

Would it change your opinion if you found out these kids were making $1000 a day? What if their parents were food vendors and didn't want to deal with permits, so they had their kids operate a stand? What if someone got salmonella from their lemonade?

I'm all for the cutesy kids killing a summer afternoon by selling homemade lemonade at the end of their driveway. The parents buying flats of drinks from Costco, a steel cashbox, and taking them to a street fair? Not so much.

[SageRaven]

It follows the same progression as everything else in our nanny state of a society.

When I was a wee lad in k-12 school, school parties were a smorgasbord of home-prepared treats (brownies, cookies, punch, you name it). Fifteen years later, when my kids were briefly in public school (we yanked 'em and un-school them now), home-made goodies are now forbidden as health hazards. So instead of a unique assortment of recipes, you get every kid offering the same bland varieties of Oreos, Ho-Hos, and Chips Ahoy.

Pardon my French, but it's a fucking sad state of affairs our society has found itself in.

[ianhawes]

Actually, I have a problem with that. Even if it was a front for parents to sell food without a permit, frankly I'd be okay with that. The fact that our government has produced an environment where I need permits, approval, and licenses to sell something is ridiculous.

[evgen]

I hate to break it too you, but it has always been the case that a permit has been required to sell food to the public for your entire life. The rules may have been selectively applied more frequently in the past, but the laws are not new.

[burgerbrain]

There is a keen difference between "on the books it is illegal" and "there are actually men with guns walking around that will enforce this"

[Androsynth]

So your ok with them selling open containers of hand made lemonade but you think someone might get salmonella from selling bottled soft drinks?

One of the highest articles on HN right now is about a guy who ran a soda machine as a kid. I think most HN'ers would be fine if they made $1000/day, even if it was just a front for their parents. That's the kind of old fashioned entrepreneurialism that the average child will never even come close to experiencing; and they will be worse off for it.

[derfclausen]

No, I didn't say I thought that. I was just spouting off a few random questions that come into play when you let the concept of a child's random lemonade stand scale up to something you'd consider a "real business".

In that other story, a kid's dad rented a soda machine and let the kid manage it. Presumably it complied with any applicable local laws regarding vending machine ownership, permits, taxes, safety, etc.

I'm all for kids learning entrepreneurship. I think the term 'Lemonade Stand' is loaded, at least for me, as it implies some innocent kind of hardly-profitable but fun thing for some kids to do once in a while. I think it would be great for some kids to see it grow and become mindful of business finances... but at that point, the line gets blurry for me.

[rmc]

This could also be a way around the minimum wage and child labour laws. Parent's business can't legally employ their 6 year old, so instead they give them a crate of soft drinks and tell them to sit in the park guitars 12 hrs. And when the cops come round to shut this exploitive practice down, you write an article bemoaning over handed regulation.