Denver police shut down a lemonade stand put on by a group of brothers over a permitting issue.
When Jennifer Knowles helped her sons set up their first lemonade stand she thought it would be a lesson in entrepreneurship and charity.
“The boys went online and they decided they wanted to help a child in another country less fortunate, and we found a place in Colorado Springs called Charity International, and they picked a five-year-old boy in Indonesia,”
But they got an unexpected lesson too.
Knowles said, “Someone complained about our lemonade stand,”
Turns out, you need a permit to operate a lemonade stand in Denver similar to a hot dog, peanut, and sunflower seed vendors outside Coors Field.
The city says it’s about health and safety, but in the Knowles’ case, competition may also be in play.
The Knowles set up right next to the Denver Arts Festival, where there was a lemonade vendor.
The family sold lemonade 2 for $1 while, she says, the vendor sold it for $7 a glass.
The lemonade stand wasn’t totally a bust. Knowles says they raked in about $200 for charity before police shut them down.
Still, she plans to make lemonade out of lemons by asking the city to waive permits in the future for kids’ lemonade stands when another stand isn’t nearby.
She said, “In hindsight, we would have never set up where we did, when we did, and we would have just done it another time. Lesson learned,”
A permit would definitely have cut into profits. It runs $125 for a one-day operation.