What tomorrow brought was chaos.
Good chaos, but still chaos.
I pulled my red wagon to the park the next morning, expecting another decent day like yesterday. What I got instead was a line of kids waiting for me before I’d even finished setting up.
“Kiora! Do you have more of those water bottles?”
“Can I get two candy bars and a soda?”
“My mom gave me five dollars for snacks!”
I’d barely gotten my sign propped up when the orders started flying. Kids were buying multiple items. Parents were handing their children money specifically to buy from “the snack girl.”
By noon, I was scrambling to keep track of everything.
“Wait, did you pay for that soda?” I asked a boy who was already walking away.
“Yeah, I gave you two dollars,” he called back.
Had he? I couldn’t remember. There had been so many customers, and I’d been making change so fast that everything was becoming a blur.
I grabbed a notebook from my backpack and started scribbling down every sale as it happened:
Candy bar: $1
Water bottle: $1
Soda: $1.50
Chips: $1
It helped, but barely. The line kept growing.
“This is insane,” I muttered to myself as I handed a girl her change. “Where are all these people coming from?”
A mom overheard me. “Word of mouth,” she said with a smile. “My daughter told all her friends about your stand yesterday. And those friends told their friends.”
Word of mouth. I’d read about that in my business book. It was supposed to be the best kind of advertising because it was free and people trusted recommendations from friends.
I just hadn’t expected it to work so fast.
“You should do really well this weekend,” the mom continued. “The little league tournament starts tomorrow. Three days of games means lots of hungry kids.”
A tournament? That sounded like a huge opportunity.
By two o’clock, I was completely sold out of candy bars and down to my last few items. I’d never had a problem like this before—too many customers.
“Sorry,” I told a disappointed kid. “I’m all out of chocolate bars. I’ve got chips and water bottles left.”
“When will you have more candy?”
“Tomorrow, I hope.”
As soon as the last customer left, I counted my money and checked my notebook. I’d made $45 in sales. Combined with my leftover cash from yesterday, I had $81.67.
But I had a new problem: I was completely out of inventory.
I loaded my empty cooler into the wagon and headed home. This was becoming a pattern—sell out, restock, repeat.
When I got home, Mom was juggling three different things at once—helping Jake with his summer reading, doing laundry, and trying to start dinner.
“Mom, I need to go to CostMart,” I said. “I sold out of everything.”
She looked up from Jake’s book with frazzled eyes. “Honey, I’m swamped right now. Can it wait until tomorrow?”
“But I’ll lose a whole day of sales!”
Dad looked up from his laptop. “I can take her,” he said. “I need to pick up a few things anyway.”
On the drive to CostMart, Dad glanced at me in the rearview mirror.
“You know, Kiora, I’m really proud of how hard you’re working,” he said. “When I told you about my old candy business, I never imagined you’d take it this far.”
“Really?”
“Really. Most kids your age would have given up after the lemonade stand didn’t work out. But you kept trying. That’s what real entrepreneurs do.”
I felt a warm glow in my chest. Dad thought I was a real entrepreneur.
At the store, I grabbed a bigger selection this time: 24 candy bars, 48 sodas, 24 bags of chips, and 48 water bottles. The total came to $67.84 with tax.
As I loaded everything into Dad’s car (there was no way I could fit all this in my wagon), I realized something that made my stomach drop.
“Dad,” I said, staring at all the boxes and cases. “I don’t think this is going to fit in my cooler.”
He looked at the mountain of snacks we’d just bought. “You might be right.”
We drove home and I tried to pack everything. The cooler that had seemed so spacious a few days ago now looked tiny. I managed to fit about half of my new inventory, but the rest had to stay in the garage.
“I guess I’ll just restock throughout the day,” I said, but even as I said it, I knew that wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t leave my stand to run home for more supplies.
That night, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. My business was growing faster than I’d ever imagined. I was making more money than I’d dreamed possible.
So why did I feel like I was drowning?
I’d solved the transportation problem with the wagon. I’d figured out how to track my sales with the notebook. But now I had a new challenge that felt even bigger.
Was I going to have to invest my hard-earned profits in buying another cooler?