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There was no ice at Giant. There was no ice at CVS. And Malia Blake was getting anxious.
Her new side hustle, intended to help her climb out of debt, was inspired by a woman she saw on TikTok do this to pay for pharmacy school. It depended on four ingredients: ice, water, sweetener and lemons.
With her SUV filled with tables, bags of lemons she got from Costco and flavored syrups she bought off Amazon, Blake pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot in Southeast Washington and ran inside. Tucked in the back of the store was a freezer.
"Yay, they have it!" Blake takes a deep exhale. "I think I'll get five or six bags. That would have been a disaster if they didn't have it."
Lemonade stands used to be only for kids who wanted to make pocket change during their summer breaks. Now people in their 20s and 30s around the country have started squeezing lemons to pay off bills. They set up stands at farmers markets, local festivals and concerts. Proprietors say it's very profitable, but the business is extremely weather dependent and has gotten highly competitive.
Blake, 26, said she has around $40,000 in debt from student loans, credit cards and a car, and she has aspirations to attend law school.
"The cost of living is kind of high and I have a lot of expenses," said Blake, who lives in D.C. and works in corporate communications. "I'm constantly looking for ways outside of my 9-to-5 [job] to put towards my debt and my future. Lemons are cheap. I thought I could do this, too."
In May, she spent $1,500 on coolers, an industrial lemon slicer, a banner and other supplies. She scoured the internet for places that would allow her to set up a booth. Malia's Main Squeeze held its first event at a farmers market on Mother's Day.
It rained.
"I didn't get much traffic. It was discouraging, but I wanted to give it a chance," Blake said.
But at her next event a week later, the weather was warm and sunny, and people started lining up for a cold, refreshing drink. Soon her calendar was filling up for events in June, like the Taste of the DMV food, music and culture festival in downtown D.C.
Blake says she makes $1,000 to $1,500 in sales per event. She sells her lemonade for $8 a cup and offers five flavors: watermelon, mango, strawberry, hibiscus and plain. It takes her about one minute to make a cup.
After one of her events, Blake pieced together some video clips of her making lemonade at her stand and posted it on TikTok, telling people about her new venture to pay off her debt. The video got more than 520,000 views. Then another lemonade video racked up 1 million views. She started selling a $3 guide on how to start a lemonade business after receiving so many questions about it.
In July, she booked her first private event: TikTok hired her to give out her lemonade to staff at its office in D.C.
"The support I've gotten in such a short amount of time has been crazy. I post where I'm going to be at and my TikTok supporters come find me to get lemonade," she said.
• 'The best business ideas are the most simple ones'
Blake started her stand after coming across a TikTok in which Elizabeth Williams talks about paying her pharmacy school tuition with profits from her lemonade business.
Williams, who lives in Owensboro, Ky., runs her mobile lemonade stand from an old horse trailer she bought on Facebook Marketplace and refurbished.
The 23-year-old runs her business April through August and sets up at events across Kentucky and parts of Tennessee and Indiana. Last year she made $80,000 in sales, she said. She said she makes anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 per event. She hires six to eight employees, mostly students, to help her at events. She's been able to pay off a small student loan and uses the income she makes during the summer months to cover her living expenses during the school year, she said.
"The profit margins are really great. There's no alcohol so you don't have to deal with a lot of licenses or permits," Williams said.
She knows what goes through some people's minds when they hear about her business.
"We're not stomping on the kids' lemonade stands," she joked. "Sometimes the best business ideas are the most simple ones."
Williams has also become a lemonade influencer. After gaining 50,000 TikTok followers by posting behind-the-scenes videos of her Liz Loves Lemonade stand, she started selling an online course on how to start a lemonade business. She gets paid for her TikTok and Instagram views and affiliate links, and has a brand deal with a lemon company. She said she made six figures from social media last year.
In Tahlequah, Okla., stay-at-home mom of two Danya Pigeon took out a $2,000 loan two years ago to cover the costs to start her lemonade tent, including a $700 lemon press. She now averages more than $2,000 per event and has brought in as much as $10,000 at a large festival. Her business runs March to November and she travels across the Midwest to festivals.
Pigeon posts her event schedule on Facebook. She spends $0.62 to $1.03 per lemonade cup, which she sells for $6 to $10 each. Pigeon offers eight flavors and mixes in some limited-edition beverages.
Last summer, in honor of the "Barbie" movie, she created "The Malibu," a strawberry watermelon lemonade with edible glitter. For Halloween, one of her drinks had spider gummies.
"There's a lot of other lemonade vendors at events, so you have to stand out," Pigeon said. "I invested in labels for my cups and things like umbrella straws. It's all about presentation."
Like Williams, she also uses social media to juice her profits. In March, Pigeon started selling straw-hole punchers on TikTok shop. She said she's made more than $10,000 so far.
Opening a lemonade stand helped Ryan and Stephanie Cominella pay off their $10,000 wedding debt. The Minneapolis couple started their business with only $500 last year.
"We started really simple," Stephanie, 28, said. "We bought hand slicers for our lemons off Amazon and a knife and a cutting board. Everything was by hand and very, very basic."
The pair doesn't drink alcohol and enjoys mixing fruity drinks. Their menu consists of 20 flavors like dirty Sprite (lemonade and Sprite), coconut cotton candy limeade and dragon fruit lychee Sprite lemonade. They charge $7 to $9 per cup.
"At farmers markets we usually make around $500. If we set up at music festivals, especially Christian music festivals where alcohol isn't a factor, we can make $2,000 to $6,000," Stephanie said. "We can make our monthly salary in one event."
Ryan quit his job as a teacher to work the lemonade business full-time, and Stephanie recently resigned from her job as a trainer for UnitedHealthcare.
Ryan said some family and friends expressed concerns about their decision to go full-time with the lemonade stand but the couple has no regrets.
"We've decided to jump full-in and take a leap of faith on it," he said. "This has been the best decision we've ever made."
Stephanie sees the potential in a year-round, multi-location lemonade business.
"We could do the snowbird thing, work here in the summer and go to Florida or somewhere warm in winter and set up there," she said.
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