Is National Lemonade Day in May or in August?

Both dates circulate. Lemonade Day's own national president has written that the organisation's day began on the first Sunday in May, and that a separate August 20 National Lemonade Day is carried on listing calendars, which the charity encourages families to use as well.

Who runs National Lemonade Day?

Lemonade Day, a Houston nonprofit registered with the IRS as P4L and classified as a youth development programme, which licenses the day out to local communities rather than staging it itself.

Does a child need a permit to sell lemonade?

It depends where you live. Lemonade Day's own guide names fourteen states where no health permit is required, and tells families in the rest to get a low cost permit from their city government.

National Lemonade Day

Next celebratedSunday, May 2, 2027

National Lemonade Day is the afternoon a child gets to be the boss, from the price on the cup to whatever is left at the end. Set a table up on the front lawn and let them run the whole thing.

See how to celebrate

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEFirst Sunday in May

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYFood

SUBCATEGORYSoft Drinks

ORIGIN

Individual Initiative

FOUNDING ENTITY

Michael Holthouse

FIRST OBSERVED

2007

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A Houston entrepreneur's second act, teaching children to trade.

Michael Holthouse founded Lemonade Day in Houston in 2007, after building and selling a computer network services company and turning to philanthropy. The organisation's own account names his wife Lisa alongside him and says the programme was established through their family foundation.

Read Lemonade Day's Own Storyvia Lemonade Day

INTRO

The nonprofit that turned a lemonade stand into a lesson

The organisation behind National Lemonade Day publishes a one-page handout for parents, and most of it is about the law. It names the fourteen states where a child can sell lemonade without a health permit. Everywhere else, its advice is to visit the local city government website and buy one.

That is not the part anyone expects. The day asks a child to run a real business for an afternoon, and a real business is what a city ordinance is built to regulate.

So one of the first things that handout settles is not how to make lemonade. It is whether a family is allowed to sell it.

ORIGINS

Lemonade Day history

INTRODUCTION

Michael Holthouse had already built and sold a company before he had anything to do with lemons. Paranet, his computer network services business, reached 1,600 employees in six years before Sprint bought it in 1997.

What he did next was aimed at children. He set up a philanthropic venture, Prepared 4 Life, to teach the social and emotional skills he argued schools were leaving out. Then his ten-year-old daughter began begging for a turtle.

He refused. She pushed to run a lemonade stand and buy it herself, and he has called that the moment the whole idea came clear.

CHAPTER 01

One Sunday in one city

The first Lemonade Day ran in Houston in 2007, on the first Sunday in May. The organisation puts its own starting point at 2,700 children in that one city.

Then the model changed, and communities began buying licences to run their own Lemonade Day, each setting its own date. Its national president, Steven Gordon, wrote that with as many as 80 communities holding licences the day had "evolved far beyond just one day or one weekend". What it calls a "Lemonade Season" typically runs from late April through early September.

CHAPTER 02

When the card table met the ordinance

On a residential street in Overton, Texas, in 2015, Andria and Zoey Green set out a stand to raise $105. They wanted to take their father out for Father's Day. They had been open about an hour when the police arrived.

The stand had taken more than $25 by then. Their mother was told they needed a permit, and the city agreed to waive its $150 peddler's fee. The health department was the bigger problem.

Lemonade counts as a food needing temperature control, which under state law meant an inspection and a permit. The sisters said they would reopen that Saturday and take donations instead.

Lemonade Day's own blog says Representative Matt Krause was moved to file House Bill 234 after learning of the Green sisters' stand. The Senate Research Center's bill analysis recorded the concern raised, that local regulation of children's drink sales might be "preventing children from becoming entrepreneurs".

That is the ground the day occupies now: a programme built to show children how a business works, running into the rules written to govern one.

The lemonade was for 50 cents and the kettle corn was a dollar, but if you got both it was a dollar.

Zoey GreenLemonade stand operator, Overton, Texas

It's a rite of passage for a kid.

Patrick JoyceIllinois state senator

BY THE NUMBERS

National Lemonade Day by the Numbers

1.5 million+: Children served since 2007
97: Communities, in two countries
$180: Average profit per stand, 2019
$1,949,810: Lemonade Day revenue, tax year 2023

GOOD TO KNOW

National Lemonade Day Around the World

Texas

House Bill 234 stops a city, county or local public health authority requiring a licence, permit or fee for the occasional sale of lemonade from a stand on private property or in a public park by anyone under 18. A companion section stops homeowners' associations doing it either, where a property owner in the subdivision has given permission.

Colorado

Senate Bill 19-103 never uses the word lemonade anywhere in its enacted text, and the article it created is headed Businesses Operated by Minors. It bars a permit requirement where the business runs no more than 84 days a year and sits far enough from a commercial rival, and its legislative declaration says such rules may be used to ensnare minors wanting to operate small-scale businesses on a very limited basis.

Illinois

Hayli's Law added a section headed Lemonade stand to the state's food handling law, barring health departments from regulating lemonade sales. It stops at 16 rather than 18, so the three states do not agree on who counts as a child.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Lemonade Day

LAW

A drinks brand volunteered to pay children's permit fines.

Lemonade Day's own complaint is that the ordinances are "directed at permanent businesses", and a jug of lemonade on a front lawn can meet the same definition. The gap was wide enough that in June 2018 Kraft Heinz's Country Time brand offered to reimburse a child's lemonade stand permit or fine, up to $300 a claim.

PRACTICE

The child owns the business, not the adult

Lemonade Day describes itself as a lesson based programme that walks a young person from a dream to a business plan, using the same principles any company starts from. The afternoon is the exam: the goal, the plan, the cost of the lemons and what a cup sells for all belong to the child.

LOCAL

Cities run it, and the national office supplies the kit

The programme is licensed community by community and delivered through local city directors and city champions, rather than staged as a single national event. The national office supplies the teaching materials, and the stands themselves are somebody's neighbourhood.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Lemonade Day

Find a participating community

Lemonade Day is licensed city by city, so the first question is whether one runs near you. The national site keeps a directory of participating communities.

LOOK

Look up the rules where you live

Check the organisation's state guide, then look up your city government's website if your state is not on it. Settling that before the table goes out is what keeps the afternoon about lemonade.

SIGN

Sign a child up, which costs nothing

Registration is free to the child and comes with printed and digital teaching tools. Sign up the person who will actually be running the stand, not the adult supervising it.

WRITE

Write the business plan before buying lemons

Work out on paper what a cup costs to make and what it will sell for. The programme's whole structure is setting a goal, making a plan and then working the plan.

SPLIT

Split the takings three ways

Lemonade Day teaches children to spend some, save some and share some of what they make. Agree the three shares before the stand opens, and let the child choose who gets the last one.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Lemonade Day?

1 / 7

Which city held the first Lemonade Day?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance run by a private nonprofit, and no Federal Register document carries the name, so it is an ordinary working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

17sources

14primary records

10independently dated

Primary records

Lemonade Day

Who We Are

The charity's own founding account, its mission, and founder Michael Holthouse's business background.