Country Time Lemonade To Pay Fines For Kids Who Set Up "Illegal" Lemonade Stands

Country Time Lemonade has started Lemon-Ade - a team that pays fines
and permit fees imposed by overzealous bureaucrats who shut down
kids' lemonade stands. 

It's an annual summertime outrage:

A kid sets up a lemonade stand, and some overzealous bureaucrat in some hoity-toity town shuts it down, saying the kid needs a business permit, a health permit, all kinds of permits to sell a couple 25 cent cups of lemonade.

You gotta enforce those rules!

Country Time, Lemonade has used this state of affairs for what I think is a pretty ingenious marketing plan. The company will help pay fines and permits for kids nationwide who run afoul of lemonade stand regulators. The whole idea is called, of course, Legal-Ade. 

Says the Country Time website: "Life doesn't always give you lemons, but when it does, you should be able to make and share lemonade with the neighborhood with legal implications..... That's why wer're here to take a stand for lemonade stands across the nation."

Of course, bureaucrats shutting down lemonade stands isn't the biggest crisis to hit the nation recently. And it's not even very common, Adweek reports. The publications says there have only been about 30 reported examples of municipalities trying to shut down kid-operated concession stands since 1983.

The fact checking site Snopes.com said most of the controversies involved demands that kids get permits for their lemonade stands, and not fines for operating them.

Still, the Country Time Legal-Ade campaign plays well with the outrage we feel when some bullying adults try to mess with kids' lemonade stands. So it's a good piece of promotion from Country Time. Give that marketing exec a raise!

Here's Country Time's video on the matter: