How Much is Your Lemonade?

Before I turn the page over to my guest today, I do need to announce the winners of last week’s contest. I held it over until today as there were so few comments on the blog last week it hardly made a contest. The winners of an ARC for Stalking Season, the second book in the Seasons Series, or an e-book of their choice are: Patricia Stolty, Yolanda Renee, and LD Masterson. Congrats to all.  

Today I am posting at The Blood Red Pencil blog where there is a good discussion going on about the awkward word usage that can pull you out of a story. I am also a guest at Heidi Thomas’s blog   sharing some of the fun I had researching Boxes For Beds. 

And now here’s humorist Slim Randles and his friend Herb with a business lesson for entrepreneurs of all ages.

We heard about the lemonade stand later, of course, as it was several blocks from where the rest of us lived, but it was only a couple of houses from Herb Collins. He had to go there. He couldn’t resist.

The stand was set up by Heather and Tim Naismith, a brother/sister team whose ages added together wouldn’t hit 18. Herb watched them set it up on that hot afternoon and finally couldn’t stand it. He had to have some fun.

The lemonade was fifty cents, a bargain in anyone’s book, as canned soda pop is running about a buck these days. And anyone can see that a lemonade stand set up by two youngsters is something to be encouraged. The free enterprise system at its very best. Ingenuity. American spirit. Besides, those Naismith kids are kinda cute, having worked so hard to get the lemonade made and the card table set up out under the tree in front.

Herb explained later that what he was really setting out to do, besides giving the kids some business, was to teach them a few harmless lessons in how to succeed in retail. Years ago, before he got into the trucking business, Herb ran a pawn shop in the city. He was known to be a sharp trader, and he delighted in telling us how little he paid for things and how much he sold them for.

“Hi kids,” he told them. “Pretty good lemonade?”

“The best, Mr. Collins,” Heather said.

“So … fifty cents a glass? Well, all right, I’ll have a glass.”

He put down fifty cents and they filled a tall paper cup nearly to the brim for him. It was good lemonade.

“So how much for four glasses of lemonade?”

Tim did some silent figuring. “Two dollars, sir.”

 “Well, that’s the retail price, of course,” Herb said, “but now we’re buying in bulk. What you do when someone wants to buy in bulk is you adjust the price. I think I should be able to buy four glasses of lemonade at, say, forty cents a glass. What do you think?”

The kids whispered in each other’s ears.

“Mr. Collins,” said Heather, “if you buy four glasses for forty cents each, how much would you expect to pay for a dozen glasses?”

Heartened by their interest in business, Herb said, “Oh, probably about thirty cents a glass, I guess. You have to make allowances for volume, you see.”

“Good,” said Heather. “We’ll sell you a dozen glasses of lemonade, then, because we want to sell a lot of it, and we’ll only charge you $3.60 for them.”

Herb pulled out the money.

“But you’ll have to drink them all here,” Heather said. “We don’t have a license for carry-out.”
 
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Brought to you by the dogs and cats at your local shelter. Visit them and bring home a new best friend. You’ll never be sorry.

If you enjoy these posts from Slim, you would enjoy his book, Home Country, a compilation of the many columns he has done over the years. Some of them are humorous and a some of them are a bit more serious, but all are delightful.