A lemonade stand that was built a few decades ago has been used by two generations in Johnson County.
About 30 years ago, the lemonade stand was built for three sisters in Bargersville. Today, it’s been passed down to 11-year-old triplets in Franklin.
Lindsay Hobbs was one of those girls. She loved serving lemonade with her sisters and she passed the pitcher first to her daughter, Nora, and now to her triplet sons, Hudson, Harrison and Henry Hobbs.
It all started when Hobbs’ father decided to build a lemonade stand for her and her sisters, she said.
“Once a year there was a huge parade when I was a kid that would come down our streets and one year my dad said ‘I’m going to make you girls a lemonade stand to sell lemonade or just give it to people’ that were in the parade that were hot,” Hobbs said.
Hobbs and her younger sisters took the lemonade stand out a couple times per year to sell lemonade in their Bargersville neighborhood. As Hobbs and her sisters got older, they eventually stopped selling lemonade and the lemonade stand sat in their parent’s garage.
Once Hobbs’ daughter, Nora, was old enough, Hobbs’ father dusted off the lemonade stand.
“Nora was in fourth or fifth grade and my dad put it in his truck and drove it over, my dad said ‘I think your kids are going to have a really great time with this,’” Hobbs said.
The stand looks much the same as it did 30 years, as the family wanted to preserve the original design made for the pioneering sellers.
“When my dad built it, it had three little hearts on it that had mine and my sisters’ names on it. My dad asked me not to cover those up because he wanted to keep it original,” Hobbs said.
Like her mother and aunts, Nora brought out the lemonade stand during the summer as much as she could. This summer, Nora decided it was time to pass the stand to her brothers.
The boys said they like running the lemonade stand and they think it’s “cool” the tradition was passed down to them.
Hobbs and her husband, Matt, said they are glad their kids have taken over the stand. There’s so many different lessons to learn from selling lemonade, they said.
“We like that they are learning about saving/spending money that they make from the stand and like that they are meeting and interacting with new people,” Matt Hobbs said. “And it shows them how to show gratitude to the family, friends and strangers that stop by and buy lemonade.”
The stand also brings the neighborhood together, they said.
“We think that it is really fun. We think people enjoy seeing kids being kids,” Hobbs said. “A lot of people get enjoyment from stopping to see the kids doing something fun.”
The family lives down the street from Franklin College, so the boys like to set up after sporting events, when there’s the most traffic in the neighborhood.
And now, during the heat of the summer, the stand offers an oasis.
“Especially when it’s really warm we do really well on selling lemonade. Sometimes we offer bikers or walkers that don’t have money,” Hudson Hobbs said.
The stand gives them a chance to interact with the neighbors while also earning money, they said.
They’ve had success and are learn about saving money through the experience, they said.
“We sometimes put it into a savings account to save it and if we want to spend it we take some out and buy different things, like the trampoline we just brought in our backyard,” Harrison Hobbs said.
After a day of selling lemonade, the boys like to ride their bikes to downtown to spend some of the cash they made from the lemonade stand.
“They love going around town and spending their money at different places, like the candy store and the coin shop, just going downtown to the businesses. They love having their own money,” Hobbs said.
The Hobbs boys, right now, are unsure when they will stop selling lemonade but they are sure they want to keep the lemonade stand for their future kids, they said.
