I've just returned from Andy's birthday eve dinner. What a rip-roaring celebration it was! In addition to homemade 'za, Char and I baked some lemon bars for the occasion. They were delicious, if not sickeningly sweet.
As I sunk my teeth into a tangy yellow gooey rectangle of citrus bliss, I was brought back to one of my first ever business ventures. Indeed, long before I was a professional amateur blogger, I was a bone-fide lemon bar peddler.
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| The lemon bars C and I made this evening. |
The business of lemon bars
My sistahs and I were in need of some quick, off-the-books cash to fuel our Rocky's habit.
Rocky's Corner Food Store is, as the name implies, a store located on a street corner in our neighbourhood. However, as the name misleads, it doesn't sell "food" so much as candy, knock-off slurpies and a vast assortment of cigarette lighters.
Walking to Rocky's is the "it" thing to do if you live in south Kenmore. It's close enough that parents can trust their kids to walk there unaccompanied, but far enough for the kids to feel free, like proper humans in society.
Char and Francie (11) and I (8) put our heads together. We had graduated from lemonade stands by that point. That was kid's stuff—incredible profit margins, but no respect within the industry. A door-to-door lemon bar business, however? That had potential. A few big orders and we would be in king-size candy bar territory. Heck, with a couple wads of Washingtons in our pockets, nothing in the candy aisle would be off limits!
So, we got to work. We decided to collect the money off our neighbours up front to facilitate cash flow and mitigate risk. Armed with a clipboard and a brilliant sales pitch ("Lemon bars are delicious. Can you afford not to taste one?") we hit up each house on 154th Street one by one.
The response was fantastic. Before we knew it, our manila envelope was full of moolah. Except for one minor hiccup—a lady in a blue house telling us that a half dozen bars for $4 was overpriced—the afternoon couldn't have gone better.
Now there was only one thing left to do: bake the most delicious lemon bars Kenmore had ever seen!
We burnt them.
They weren't completely charred, but they were pretty dang hard and brown. The thing is though, we had already collected the money. We'd gotten what we wanted from the deal. It was right there, crumpled up in a big envelope on the kitchen table. If we hurried, we could still make it to Rocky's before dinner.
So, we did what any soon-to-liquidate business would do. We doused the crispy bars in a half-inch of powdered sugar, wrapped them in two sheets of thick foil and set them on each customer's doorstep without as much as a tap on their door.
We felt guilty for a bit, but then let the lemon bar business fade quickly into the past. Except we did still badmouth the blue house lady every time we walked past. What a bitch.
LYMI,
Margaret
Rocky's Corner Food Store is, as the name implies, a store located on a street corner in our neighbourhood. However, as the name misleads, it doesn't sell "food" so much as candy, knock-off slurpies and a vast assortment of cigarette lighters.
Walking to Rocky's is the "it" thing to do if you live in south Kenmore. It's close enough that parents can trust their kids to walk there unaccompanied, but far enough for the kids to feel free, like proper humans in society.
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| Rocky's — so good even the mailman shops there! |
Char and Francie (11) and I (8) put our heads together. We had graduated from lemonade stands by that point. That was kid's stuff—incredible profit margins, but no respect within the industry. A door-to-door lemon bar business, however? That had potential. A few big orders and we would be in king-size candy bar territory. Heck, with a couple wads of Washingtons in our pockets, nothing in the candy aisle would be off limits!
So, we got to work. We decided to collect the money off our neighbours up front to facilitate cash flow and mitigate risk. Armed with a clipboard and a brilliant sales pitch ("Lemon bars are delicious. Can you afford not to taste one?") we hit up each house on 154th Street one by one.
The response was fantastic. Before we knew it, our manila envelope was full of moolah. Except for one minor hiccup—a lady in a blue house telling us that a half dozen bars for $4 was overpriced—the afternoon couldn't have gone better.
Now there was only one thing left to do: bake the most delicious lemon bars Kenmore had ever seen!
We burnt them.
They weren't completely charred, but they were pretty dang hard and brown. The thing is though, we had already collected the money. We'd gotten what we wanted from the deal. It was right there, crumpled up in a big envelope on the kitchen table. If we hurried, we could still make it to Rocky's before dinner.
So, we did what any soon-to-liquidate business would do. We doused the crispy bars in a half-inch of powdered sugar, wrapped them in two sheets of thick foil and set them on each customer's doorstep without as much as a tap on their door.
We felt guilty for a bit, but then let the lemon bar business fade quickly into the past. Except we did still badmouth the blue house lady every time we walked past. What a bitch.
LYMI,
Margaret
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