The Lemon Tree
(Page 3 of 3)
May/June 1972
By Brian Rogers
Our biggest boost was the free publicity we got as the media learned — and then spread the word — about our fresh and natural drink. The papers in the area all did stories on us and KFAR-TV filmed us and put us on the news. Exposure like that can really help.
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At the end of the summer our books showed $2.400 worth of sales for 32 days (17 "good ones" and 15 short and/or "bad ones") work. Average daily sales were $80 for three to seven hours of selling and one to three hours with the books and arrangements.
We spent a total of $1,850: $1,300 on ice, lemons and sugar; $150 on gas and other auto expenses; $300 for fair space and one-quarter of our rent (our "office" — the tax benefits are nice when you own your own business — I recommend Dome Simplified Weekly Bookkeeping Record for ideas and a fantastic way to figure out how the money travels); and $100 for other expenses.
No, we didn't make any heavy bread. One of the reasons was our late start and another was our location. An Alaskan summer is nice and warm with long daylight hours . . . but it's also the shortest season here. Nights are cool and the first snow sometimes comes (as it did last year) on Labor Day.
We do own a truck now though, and people want us back this year. We know what we did wrong and, perhaps, what we can do right the next time around.
I may have another truck and a stand at "Alaskaland" this coming season, I'm looking for a natural sweetener to replace sugar and I've found a place that'll air-freight fresh organic lemons to Alaska! We know we can pick up extra bucks selling other things, too . . . we went through 30 loaves of homemade bread in one day when we sold sandwiches at a university picnic. We'd like to try snow cones (a mix of fresh lemon juice, water and sugar over crushed ice) and, later, snow-creme cones (a scoop of vanilla ice cream inside a snow cone).
In closing, I'd recommend this business to anyone. If it worked at all here it should really pay off for a person in a warmer climate. We didn't get rich our first time out but we met many good people and got a lot of vitamin C while having a good time. Operating our own stand was a helluva lot better than working for someone else . . . and we don't figure we ripped anybody off because we made a damn righteous glass of lemonade!
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