When Jennifer Knowles helped her three young sons set up a lemonade stand, she never expected it would get shut down by police. Someone called in a complaint about the stand operating without a permit, and police made the boys to close up shop.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Police have also shut down kids’ lemonade stands in Georgia and Texas. Even celebrity kids aren’t immune: Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld’s kids had their sidewalk stand closed as well. It is a sick mind that cannot tolerate the exchange of goods and services by children without getting the government involved.
Big government is encroaching on wholesome summertime fun. I shouldn’t have to justify why lemonade stands are a good activity for kids, but just in case: They teach kids how to interact with adults, get them outside and away from screens, and help them practice basic math. The lemonade is just an added bonus. Everything about these tiny, temporary stands is wholesome and good. The Knowles kids weren’t lemonade hustlers looking to make a quick buck outside the law. They were raising money for a five-year-old child in Indonesia via Charity International.
As with most kids’ activities, it takes self-important adults to truly ruin this. And that’s what happened to the Knowles kids. They set up somewhere with high foot traffic (a smart entrepreneurial decision) that landed them near Coors Field. They unintentionally and unknowingly picked a spot near another beverage vendor, who was selling lemonade for $7 a pop. It sounds like someone was enjoying the price-gouging benefits of a monopoly and felt threatened when a competitor entered the market.
Why wouldn’t the vendor walk down the sidewalk, say hello to the kids, and ask politely that they move their stand a few yards further away? (The vendor might also consider helping the kids move their table, and then buying a glass of lemonade from them. That would be the neighborly thing to do.) Jennifer Knowles told CBS4 that “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.”
Jennifer also told CBS4 that she plans to advocate for a city rule that would allow unlicensed lemonade stands to operate freely, so long as they’re outside a respectful distance from the nearest licensed vendor. A petition campaign takes this a step farther by calling for a nationwide cultural norm that says what we’re all thinking: If you call the cops on a kid’s lemonade stand, you’re the worst. (In the interest of total transparency, you should know that I work for the platform on which the petition is running.)
A beverage vendor license in Denver costs $125 a day. That’s a hefty sum and the city ought to make it less pricey. But that doesn’t justify calling the police on kids. Yes, lemonade stands are unlicensed, and we should keep them that way. No one is operating under the assumption that lemonade stands are established companies. You wouldn’t pay a neighbor’s kid to mow your lawn and then send him a 1099-MISC during tax season because technically he’s an independent contractor.
Kid-run temporary businesses exist outside of the formal economy. For once, adults should stay out of it and let the young ones call the shots.
Angela Morabito (@AngelaLMorabito) writes about politics, media, ethics, and culture. She holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Georgetown University.
