Country Time Lemonade Will Pay Permits, Fines for Kiddos’ Lemonade Stands
“If you live in a state that deems unpermitted lemonade stands illegal, don’t worry, Legal-Ade is still helping kids this summer. Any child fined for running an unpermitted lemonade stand can have his or her parent apply for reimbursement.”
Cities and local municipal governments are typically the worst offenders in the realm of individual liberty. They make everything from hair braiding to giving meals to the homeless to a pop-up lemonade stand illegal but for proper permit.
Country Time Lemonade has their own legal aide program that promises to help out kiddos who find themselves on the wrong side of the law for their lemonade purveying endeavors (up to $300.00). Currently, non-permitted lemonade stands are only legal in 14 states. “Pathetic” doesn’t quite cover it.
Their ‘Legal-ade‘ program even provides suggestions and best practices for lobbying for legislative change.
From their official release:
Last year, Country Time Legal-Ade helped kids across the country pay permit fees and fines on their lemonade stands due to outdated permit laws. This year, inspired by bills passed in Texas and Colorado that changed archaic rules outlawing lemonade stands, Country Time will give lemonade-lovers the tools to start changing their state’s permit laws. After all, unpermitted lemonade stands are only legal in 14 out of 50 states.
Lemonade stands help kids build strong work habits, have fun, and become young entrepreneurs. The reality is, they are being shut down because of old, arcane and very real permit laws. Last summer, Country Time took a stand by introducing Legal-Ade: a crack team ready to straighten out lemonade stand-related permits and fines. Legal-Ade defended kids’ rite to a lemonade stand and all the benefits they bestow.
This summer, Country Time wants to legalize lemonade stands across the country by giving parents and kids the tools to start changing the laws in their state. Simply go to www.countrytimelegalade.com to learn if lemonade stands are legal in your state without a permit. If they aren’t, Country Time is helping you start the process by giving you the information to contact your local state representative and providing a downloadable Legal-Ade support yard sign. Watch a video here on how to start changing your local lemonade laws.
If you live in a state that deems unpermitted lemonade stands illegal, don’t worry, Legal-Ade is still helping kids this summer. Any child fined for running an unpermitted lemonade stand can have his or her parent apply for reimbursement. To apply, simply upload the image of your child’s permit or fine along with a description of what your lemonade stand means to your child, in his or her own words. The submission will be reviewed by the Legal-Ade team and if it complies with the terms, you will receive the exact amount to cover the permit or fine, up to $300.00*. Visit www.countrytimelegalade.com for complete details.
Smart business and also a great example of a private business filling in where government has completely failed.
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Comments
Hooray for Country Time Lemonade.
Let’s hope they give many of the local grown tin horn dictators a black eye.
Country Time Lemonade actually should give “Lemon” Awards or the sourest, sickest loco-authorities’ actions.
“for”
Sounds like a nice enough program, but it will end when some yahoo sues Country Time, insisting he got food poisoning from an unlicensed, unregulated, free-range lemonade stand.
While I wish I could disagree with you, I can’t. I am all for kids being allowed to sell, or attempt to sell their lemonade or watery kool-ade.
The same holds for those who want to mow lawns or shovel snow for a few spending dollars.
It seems to me that if a town or municipality licenses a person to sell such services, the town then – being that it really is just another tax imposed on the citizens of that town, should be held accountable if the product in your example gives food poisoning. Where was the town’s assurance other than collecting a permit fee in making sure the license holder or permit holder was working to a reasonable standard? It seems implied to me that if a governing body makes you buy a license or permit to sell a good then they are also taking responsibility to regulate it as well.
How I long for simpler days when we had so much more freedom, and personal responsibility.
If the town/county/state government addresses this problem, all should be fine. Government wouldn’t have the same possible liability vulnerability as would a private corporation like Country Time.
What this requires is an attitude change. Quit thinking you can always find a deep pocket for your mistake.
If you don’t see the parent hovering over the operation, if you don’t see the parent actively helping, or if you notice the parent is a slob, then don’t drink the drink.
In our stand, in the 60s, we sold prepackagd M & Ms….
Gosh, people, get a grip. Freedom has a price, and that is that everything isn’t perfect all the time, and you have to THINK for yourself. People get sick from LICENSED places, wasn’t Chipotle one of them?
Acquire the attitude of FREEDOM. You will LOVE IT!
And he or she would lose.
The contamination would come from the water, not the powder and country time is not sponsoring the stands or endorsing the products. It’s offering to pay punitive damages on behalf of a fined family.
we must ban high capacity assault lemonade stands! think about the children!
More of Gulliver tied down by Lilliputians.
This country has got law-itis.
My brother and sister and I did this as a kid. It was a blast! I don’t know why, but it was so much fun! As was the go-kart with the trailer!!!!
It was fun, at least to me, because the adults who bought the drinks helped make it so. You got your dime or nickle or whatever you charged, and the adults (they were the usual customer) acted like it was great stuff. I think I got a kick out of earning a little money and the adults out of supporting that effort you put forth.
I found it fun to busk for the sales, daring to approach people to try and sell them a drink or two.
And in the process, learning to deal with adults in an adult way. A very valuable lesson for youths.
Look today at kids who never got that chance – selling door-to-door for Boy/Girl Scouts, lemonade stands. Now their parents take their “fundraisers” to work and get their coworkers to sign up with no involvement from the kids. My kids wanted me to do this – I made them come with me to work for a couple of hours and ask people themselves. One of them sold candy bars for $1.00 for band, and sold out in 30 minutes. 54 candy bars.
This country has got law-itis.
———————–
One of the reasons I dont’ whine about the dumba** lawmakers being in limbo. The less they can do the less damage there is to my country.
I still think they should have to spend a year in prison whenever they don’t make a balanced budget. Only exception is a DECLARED war.
“It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.”. Will Rogers
I sold Kool-Aid as a kid. Once my brother and sisters sold coffee to the hippies protesting the Viet Nam war! Our mother couldn’t brew the pots of coffee fast enough. (It was a chilly morning and many were hungover from the night before.)
That’s why I always stop and buy a cup when I see kids selling lemonade today, even if I have to pull a u-turn. I’m definitely going to write my reps in Annapolis.
Here is the problem with pop-up kid’s lemonade stands; public health and liability. Almost all food service businesses are regulated for public health reasons. They are regularly inspected. Their employees have to take food handling and sanitation course. They have to be licensed so that the ownership is known. Most kid’s lemonade stands are not.
Now, it would be possible to pas regulations which would make it possible for such stands to be operated, on a limited basis, with minimal regulation. But, it is simply impossible to legally justify not regulating lemonade stands, allegedly operated by children, while forcing legitimate businesses to submit to regulations. Local governments already have a significant problem with unlicensed businesses; from gypsy cabs and jitneys to mobile hot dog stands and food trucks, to casual pop-ups, to unlicensed contractors. Now, if the population of any town, city or county really wants to allow kid’s lemonade stands, all they have to do is to convince their representatives to compose regulations which allow.
But, it is simply impossible to legally justify not regulating lemonade stands, allegedly operated by children, while forcing legitimate businesses to submit to regulations.
Not so. Businesses often have to comply with different regulations depending on size, hours of operation, personnel (a legit family-only business can sometimes avoid regulations mandatory for other businesses), location, etc.
In this case, customers with an ounce of sense know perfectly well that a bunch of juveniles are not going to comply with the same regulations governing larger, adult operations, and they wouldn’t reasonably expect the same health & sanitation protections. And anybody worried about it can easily take their custom elsewhere.
A similar situation arose in the early days of automotive safety regulations from the feds. Convertibles, a mainstay of American production through the fifties and early sixties, disappeared from the market, due to manufacturer’s fears that the promised regulations about rollover protection would doom open cars forever after. But when the regulations finally appeared . . . surprise! Convertibles were not required to meet the same (impossible) rollover integrity standards as hardtops and sedans. In a rare moment of good sense, the feds realized that reasonable customers wouldn’t expect open cars to be as sturdy in case of accident as enclosed cars, and if they chose to buy or travel in convertibles anyway, that was their risk to run and their decision to make.
Obviously, the same reasoning could be applied to any business endeavor conducted by juveniles.
Tom, you really have got to start reading my entire post. Or is it possible that you are simply cherrypicking my posts to make a bogus point? Ummmm.
This was the sentence you posted as well the sentence immediately preceding it: “Now, it would be possible to pas regulations which would make it possible for such stands to be operated, on a limited basis, with minimal regulation. But, it is simply impossible to legally justify not regulating lemonade stands, allegedly operated by children, while forcing legitimate businesses to submit to regulations”
See that? That IS exactly what YOU said. Exactly. IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE TO PASS REGULATIONS WHICH WOULD MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR SUCH STANDS TO BE OPERATED, ON A LIMITED BASIS,WITH MINIMAL REGULATION. Get it? minimal regulation. My point was that there is no way that a government jurisdiction can leglly justify allowing a lemonade stand to operate WITHOUT some kind of regulation.
The local government still has the responsibility to safeguard the public in the area of public health, whether the food is being prepared and served by juveniles or adults.
Mac45 has Law-itis.
NO, WE NEED NO REGULATION OF CHILDREN’S LEMONADE/KOOL AID/COKE, CANDY STANDS.
Most kids go out there for a couple of hours and do their thing, one or two days, and that’s it.
Figure it out, Mr. Law-itis.
THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE FREEDOM.
IS IT NOT POSSIBLE THAT THE BUSINESSES BEING REGULATED NOW, WOULD NOT KILL US, IF THEY WERE LESS REGULATED?
Remember when ost suburban cities used to allow unregulated yard sales? I do. Now-a-days almost every suburban town and most cities regulate yard sales. they limit the frequency of the sales and usually make the seller obtain a permit, either for free or for a very, very small fee. Do you have any idea why that is? Because you had people running a yard sale every weekend as a means of making money. They were gaming the system for their own benefit. Do you have any idea we we have zoning laws to keep people from running businesses out of their homes? because people were running all kinds of businesses. And, not just Tupperware businesses, either. Things like auto repair shops, upholstery shops, welding shops and just about any other small business that you can name. Ever see the flower peddlers, the velvet painting hawkers and the Mexican handicraft stands that used to spring up along the highways? All unlicensed and unregulated. Then we had the big hot dog cart boom, in the late 80s and early 90s. Everybody and his brother was buying a hot dog cart for a couple of hundred bucks and parking it along the roadside, sometimes with a young woman in a bikini hawking the dogs. Sometime right down the street from some poor guy who was spending thousands of dollars a month to run a licensed lunch counter out of a storefront. That is why we license businesses. We regulate food service businesses so that we do not end up with large disease outbreaks or food poisoning. Because if we don’t, we end up with problems because people are careless, don’t care about anyone other than themselves or lie cheat and steal for their own benefit.
You want to let little Billy and Betty serve food and drinks to passers-by from a makeshift stand beside the road? No problem. But, why shouldn’t they have to take the same food prep and sanitation courses that restaurant employees do? Why shouldn’t they have to have a temporary business license? Because they are children? What kind of qualification is that to serve food and drink safely? Do we let 8 year olds drive cars, trucks and buses; or fly airplanes? When you walk into a licensed restaurant, you see a business license. You see a food service inspection report [or you can if you want]. In most places you can go online and actually read the latest inspection report on any given restaurant in your area.
This Back To The Garden mentality, where things like children’s lemonade stands never cause injury is wonderful. But, it is incredibly unrealistic.
Please cite just a few examples of “large disease outbreaks or food poisoning” as a result of unlicensed lemonade stands.
I missed the bikini clad hot dog hawker. Dagnabit, I miss all the good stuff!
Mac45, I dislike expressing my ire personally, but in this case, I will. You are a son of a bitch, that kills FREEDOM.
Just so you know, my NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR runs his mechanic business out of his home. He’s disabled and does what he can to make money. I don’t care one damn bit, but then I love FREEDOM.
I personally intend to begin running two businesses out of my home. Saves commute time, office rent, and allows me to cook my lunch at home.
You want a TV-Picture-Perfect life around you. Well in TV, all the ugly stuff is in the opposite direction of what you see, where all the cameras, the wires, the scaffolding etc., is.
You want that fake world, that is EXTREMELY expensive and makes it hard for families to support themselves (not everyone has a law degree) then go to a subdivision with enforceable covenants and have at it. Otherwise, I prefer you just find a family that has a skill but can’t use it thanks to your g–damn zoning laws, and support them each and every month.
I despise people with this mindset. How anti-life can you be!!
In case anyone hasn’t figured out, I’m old school. I believe in real freedom, not fake freedom – kind of like illegal aliens have in America today, minus the welfare payments.
My Dad was born in the 19-teens. It’s a different perspective, when you don’t have a government permission slip to breathe or to drive or to have a business.
Whole nother world.
Completely agree. My dad was thirteen when the US entered WW I, mom a couple of years younger. They started in a world where transportation was horse and wagon, train or ship and passed in a world where we put people on the Moon. My first experience with mass transit was a train pulled by a steam locomotive. I still love them and am lucky enough to be able to take the grandkids (and me!) to the Age of Steam museum in Dallas and on trips on the Texas State Railroad.
*when you don’t have to have a government permission slip to breathe, or to drive, or to have a business.
That map is happily out of date regarding Texas. Our legislature passed, and the Governor signed a bill removing any need for children lemonade stands to get a permit, .. state-wide.
I believe the states highlighted are states where kid run lemonade stands do not require permit and other ridiculous government involvement.
Do the thirty-six states with laws prohibiting kids’ lemonade stands have actual state laws or were those states with some towns having local ordinances?
I see my state supposedly has “laws” but I also see these stands all over. Something does not compute.
Perhaps, like many statutes which are either out of favor or immaterial the state devotes no time and effort to enforcment? Alternatively the issue is left up to local entities without an overriding state statute establishing the legality of the lack of permits for kid’s efforts.
I’m adding Country Time to my grocery list! =)
I hope this works out, but I suspect some judge is going to make them pay dearly for this.