Andy writes a post out of order…
Last Sunday, after Leilani’s party, we had almost a full case of children’s juice boxes left over. We took them out of the ice cooler to dry and Leilani was helping me put them away. As we were doing so, Leilani said she could be a juice vendor, I suppose because it looked like we had as many as on a store shelf (a regular store, not Costco where they actually came from).
But with the cooler still full of ice, I immediately thought of an ice cream vendor, like the ones we see every time we go to a park now (thank goodness Leilani knows they sell bad ice cream). I asked Leilani if she wanted to go sell the juice at the park, just like the ice cream vendors, and she immediately asked if she could ring the bell.
So we put the juice back in the cooler, and put the cooler in our scavenged wagon. Everyone contributed to the idea, Leilani got some balloons also left over from the party, Sonja wrote a sign and had the idea to make it a fundraiser for Leilani’s new school, and I found a bell. And then we were off.
Leilani actually walked all the way to the park, only riding on the way home. I practiced with her how to offer the three flavors of juice and tell people the price. When we got to the park, there wasn’t the huge crowds we had seen on Saturday, but it was sunny and lots of kids were at the playground. We walked slowly through, with Leilani ringing the bell. People looked, saw the signs, but nobody came running to buy from us. Fortunately, there were some baseball games further in the park, so we just kept going. By then, I figured Leilani needed to advertise some more and I told her to shout “Juice, juice, healthy juice.” I was willing to organize everything and pull the wagon, but she had to do the selling. But there still weren’t that many people around and nobody bought anything.
After maybe 20 minutes, Leilani got tired of not selling and wanted to play. We parked the cooler in the shade and ran around for a while, playing chase in a quiet part of the park. I had to get Leilani to focus on the juice business again, but we eventually went back through the park. This time there were more people and one of the mothers watching a baseball game bought a juice. It turns out, the lady also writes a blog about living in San Bruno and took Leilani’s picture with the juice wagon as well–look for the San Bruno Life blog link in the list to the right.
But it was too little, too late. Leilani was getting tired, and we still didn’t sell anything on the main playground, I guess everyone expects ice cream and everyone has juice already. Leilani wanted to stop and play, but I thought it was awkward to just leave the cooler there and run around. So we walked home and soon Leilani was riding on top and drinking a juice. I took the picture of her above back at home, holding the first dollar she earned (almost) by herself. I had a juice too, while I was putting the juice away again, so at least we got rid of 3 of them.
I’m not quite sure what Leilani thinks about selling. She had lots of fun, but I could tell she was disappointed we didn’t sell more–but how to make her understand the problem of demand and marketing on her first try? It’s an important skill to learn, for both her and the parents, because starting with her new school, we have about 15 years of fundraising ahead of us.