Lemonade Day is June 3

There is no drink that defines summer as much as lemonade. This year, lemonade takes on a new twist with help from Bangor Savings Bank.
    Bangor Savings Bank is sponsoring Lemonade Day Maine on Sunday, June 3.
Lemonade Day in Maine is a program to help children develop their entrepreneurial skills from researching to running their own lemonade stand business.
To begin, children need to register either online or at the local branch of Bangor Savings Bank to receive a lemonade backpack with an Entrepreneur Workbook that teaches them the 14 lessons of Lemonade Day like creating budgets, setting profit-making goals, serving customers, repaying investors and giving back to the community.
Children can also earn prizes for the Best Recipe, Best Stand and a chance to win the LemonBiz scholarship contest, with first prize a $2,500 college scholarship.
The first step, like with any business, is to come up with a business plan so you will know what you can make for a profit and what you will have for expenses. Once this has been done the child needs to find an investor to lend them the funds to cover their expenses. It must be an investor and not a donation with the child having some type of consequence if the funds aren’t paid back. This can be something like mowing the lawn or community service.
Children are encouraged to experiment with new ingredients to make their own lemonade recipe.
After getting down the secret recipe, children will need to build a stand, color a sign with their business name and start working on advertising remembering to promote their charity. The next step is looking for the right location to draw in customers.
Along the way, they acquire skills in goal-setting, problem solving, and gain self-esteem critical for future success.
Children are taught when opening a business to gather the necessary supplies, promote their charity by offering a tip jar, and to think how they will provide good service to their customers. At the end of the day the work doesn’t end as they have to clean up the stand, remove advertising materials, pay back their investor and make a donation to their charity.
“This is a great learning exercise for children of all ages” said Chris Nickerson, vice president and regional market manager. It will take the support of the entire community for these young entrepreneurs to be successful so I hope that anyone who is approached by a child participating in Lemonade Day will give consideration to their request.”
The foremost objective of Lemonade Day is to empower youth to take ownership of their lives and become productive members of society, explained the Bangor Savings Bank online press release.
The release went on to point out what children learn from participating in Lemonade Day financial literacy and economics, capital equipment and consumables; supply and demand; credit, debt, gross and net income; marginal utility; return on investment and compound interest.
Children use critical thinking, while engaging in customer service, problem solving, presentation of skills and design. Those who participate also learn about leadership, attaining goals, self-direction and motivation; charity work, social skills and confidence.
They also engage in math, reading, along with oral and written communication.