by. Daniel Dao

On Sunday, May 3rd, 2009, Sunflower Mission’s Junior Members (L.E.G.) hosted a lemonade sale. The event corresponded with the Prepared 4 Life’s Lemonade Day Event, which annually promotes business experience and entrepreneurship for kids all over America. Under the guidance of our mentor and an SM Director, Quyen Ma, we calculated costs, presented a business plan, and executed a successful fundraiser.

Now, many of you would say that making and selling lemonade is some kind of easy business. However, I know that any of our many volunteers and helpers would tell you that a lot of work was put into it. I would now like to present a little summary of the work involved in pulling this off.

The L.E.G. core members, consisting of Vi-An Nguyen, Nanhi Tran, and I, held our first meeting with Quyen a week before. We outlined the task, speculated costs, and made a list of materials. It was decided that we would make homemade, old-fashioned lemonade, making everything from scratch.

The lemonade preparation started on Friday as soon as the 600 plus lemons arrived. It started with one manual juicer and one electric juicer, moving very slowly. By Saturday, we had about 6 juicers, and more volunteers. We finished about 400 lemons on Saturday, leaving 200 more to be done on Sunday. By Sunday morning, we had about 20 volunteers juicing lemons, making posters, and preparing lemonade. Needless to say, with all the hard work, our PERFECT lemonade was done in no time.

As we were loading up the cars, the sky was dark and cloudy. As we set up the stand, it started to drizzle. Luckily, the clouds cleared up and we were able to start selling as scheduled. At first, business was slow and we were nervous about yelling out to people but it got easier as time went by. While only 4 of the volunteers worked in the booth, the others carried posters and signs around Town Square, advertising. Our advertisers even delivered lemonade to people who didn’t want to come to the stand!

At around 6:30 PM, we were joined by Ms. Julie Eberly of Prepared 4 Life as well as Mr. John Sheptor CEO of Imperial Sugar, a Sugar Land City Council member, and other Lemonade Day staff members. As a special surprise, Nanhi Tran, Joyce Chuen, and I went on stage of the Andy Vargas performance to present Ms. Julie Eberly, Mr. John Sheptor, and the Sugar Land city Council member with a bouquet of flowers.

After a long day of squeezing lemon juice, arguing about lemonade, and selling lemonade, we turned in, making more than we had even predicted!

I know I am speaking for all of L.E.G. when I say thank you to our mentor, Quyen Ma, who pushed us (ever so gently) when we were tired and rather…uncooperative. We were grateful for the help and participation from 5 out of 7 members of the SM BOD! I would also like thank Mrs. Amina Tang, representing the Sorensen family, and their donation of $100.00 to the event. Our last thank you goes out to all the volunteers, friends and supporters who came to buy lemonade! We couldn’t have done without you!

- Dan Dao, L.E.G. Vice President

Click HERE to see Business Proposal.

Click HERE to see "Lemonade Stand" photo album

Prepare for the event

Lemonade Cruise

Lemonade Stand

Selling Lemonade

Work hard, party HARDER