Your kid busted for selling lemonade? Country Time wants to help
Kraft Heinz's Country Time lemonade brand says arcane laws are making life difficult for children engaging in the time-honored summertime business of running a lemonade stand. Some kids are actually getting fined for peddling the refreshing drink without a permit.
Big Lemonade to the rescue: Country Time says it will reimburse kids who get fined -- up to $60,000 -- or will cover the cost of a permit until Aug. 31, dubbing the program "Legal-Ade." To seek compensation, parents can report fines imposed this year or last.
Kids selling lemonade: Cool. Kids getting busted for selling lemonade: So not cool. https://t.co/wQzmjDG9Nz
— CountryTime (@CountryTime) June 7, 2018
The company also says that for every retweet of its Legal-Ade promotional video, it'll donate a buck to help kids who run afoul of the law running lemonade stands in the future.
While police typically don't go after junior lemonade vendors for lacking the proper papers, there are exceptions. In May, Denver police shut down a lemonade stand run by two young entrepreneurs for failing to get a permit, according to KTVQ-TV. Meanwhile, not thinking to get a health inspection for their stand reportedly proved to be the undoing of two Texas sisters, aged 7 and 8, trying to raise money for Father's Day two summers ago.
Texas police shut down girls' lemonade stand because they didn't have a health inspection: http://t.co/OfQGxC9cqB pic.twitter.com/nSfsriUJAg
— ABC13 Houston (@abc13houston) June 10, 2015
In Georgia, authorities several years ago shuttered a lemonade stand run by three girls for not having a business license or the required permits. And then there is Autumn Thomasson, a six-year-old Californian who appears in a Legal-Ade video, stating: "My lemonade stand got shut down because I didn't have a permit. It was unfair."