Posted on 08/02/2013 1:03:16 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Vivienne Harr has already been garnering headlines for selling lemonade for 365 consecutive days – including on Day 173 at New York City’s Times Square – and raising exactly $101,320 that she donated to a nonprofit dedicated to ending child slavery.
But now, the 9-year-old girl from Marin County’s Fairfax, a 40-minute drive from San Francisco, is stepping up her game, again, if that’s even possible.
Last month, she began rolling out her mother’s recipe for organic, Fair Trade, “tunnel pasteurized” lemonade, bottled in Michigan and shipped to 70 mostly locally owned, organic shops in California and Oregon. On Friday, her commercially available lemonade debuted at Woodlands Market in Kentfield.
“I love telling people about my story,” Vivienne told NBC Bay Area on Friday. “I love selling lemonade.”
Among the many things that set Vivienne’s lemonade apart (notwithstanding that it was created after she sold lemonade for an entire year without taking a day off starting last June, that she donates the profits to charity, and that it is now a commercial product sold at stores) is that customers are now being ask to pay what they want for the bottles of pink juice.
“I ask people to give what’s in their hearts,” she said.
There have been sporadic “pay what you want” commercial enterprises throughout the country, including the now-defunct Panera Bread’s turkey chili venture to raise food insecurity awareness that has now fizzled out.
But Ayelet Gneezy, an expert in “pay what you want” studies at the University of California, San Diego said what Vivienne is doing is very unusual.
“I’ve never heard of this before,” Gneezy said. “It’s very impressive.
Gneezy, and Leif Nelson, her colleague at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, found that overall, the majority of people will choose not to buy something if it is a pay-what-you-want pricetag. But those who do choose to do so, will pay more than the asking price.
Since Tuesday, when Molsberry Market's in Sonoma began selling Vivienne’s lemonade, owner Joe Molsberry said that about 40 of 100 cases have sold. Some people paid $20 a case and others paid $50. The suggested donation is $2.99 a bottle. What's amazing though, he said, is that newcomers are visiting the story just because they've heard about Vivienne's story.
And this is a story that rises far above sales of lemonade and what customers will pay for it. It’s about the girl – and the family – behind the sweet-tasting liquid.
Vivienne, soon to be a fourth grader at Cascade Canyon Elementary School, and her family were visiting Sonoma last May when the young girl saw the book “Slavery” by Lisa Kristine, a journalist who photographs slaves across the world.
An image of two Nepalese boys with giant rocks strapped to their heads grabbed Vivienne’s attention, and she wanted to do something about ending their plight. “Maybe we could sell lemonade?” was the simple question Vivienne asked her parents, Alex, a stay-at-home mom, and her father, Eric, a triathlete, author and founder of Resonate Social, a successful digital marketing.
They didn't say no.
“We’re sort of this out-of-the-box family,” Harr said. “We didn’t discount it. We went all in.”
Which meant that for 365 days starting in June 2012, the family – including now-3-year-old Turner – took to the streets – once, even flying to New York after an invitation from Mayor Michael Bloomberg – to sell lemonade. It was Vivienne’s idea to have people pay “what was in their hearts” because, she says, “it’s a giveness, not a business.”
Vivienne gave the first $101,320 to Not for Sale, a Half Moon Bay nonprofit that tries to eradicate child slavery, and other smaller donations to the Nepal Youth Foundation, Free the Slaves, LeTot Center in Dallas, United Way, and the Mayor’s Fund in NYC for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.
The family’s promise is that when they start to make a profit from the bottled lemonade, half will go to five charities, and the other half will go toward salaries and production costs. Harr said he was able to secure about $800,000 in investor funding to launch the company this summer.
Harr since sold his company and has become the CEO of Make a Stand Lemon-aid, and the full-time business partner of his daughter – a “fiercely compassionate” girl who cried when bees drowned when she was little. He said the family isn’t particularly devout or religious, though they do occasionally attend church, but that they do now feel that their lemonade business is sort of divinely inspired, or at least, that this was their fate.
As for now, Vivienne is having a typical summer, playing with her brother, Barbie’s, and of course, drinking lots of lemonade.
“It’s low in sugar, it tastes so good,” she said. “I drink it all the time.”
IF YOU'RE INTERESTED: Half of all profits from your purchase go to five carefully-vetted, hand-selected organizations that lead the way in eradicating child slavery: Free the Slaves, UNICEF, Nepal Youth Foundation, the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labor–and an organization that focuses on this issue here in the United States: GEMS: Girls Educational & Mentoring Services. To learn more, click on makeastand.com.
This could work until she gets older. Then adults won’t feel like giving money to some old lady. It’s cute when it’s a kid.
Enough said.
How cute. But I wonder just how many child slaves have been freed.
When she gets older she can switch to selling beer and wine.
Is she getting paid for doing this?
My guess would be zero.
Now try paying rent little girl.
Does she have a license to sell lemonade? I’ve heard that local authorities across the country have put lemonade stands out of business for this reason.
He companion in training as a pimp.
I don’t want to rain on her parade, but has she checked what these non profits are doing with her donations? Many non profits raise lots of money, only to spend it mostly on staff salaries and perks, very little if any money going towards their intended purpose.
An image of two Nepalese boys with giant rocks strapped to their heads grabbed Vivienne’s attention, and she wanted to do something about ending their plight. “Maybe we could sell lemonade?” was the simple question Vivienne asked her parents,
For such a "Something" to be effective, it usually must involve lots of men with guns, tanks, jeeps, artillery, and such, along with lots blood, guts, and gore; until the bunch holding others in slavery has leaked enough blood and guts to want it to stop.
Selling lemonade is a cute idea.
If she gives a cut to democrat party coffers, then she’ll be ok.
She has a great idea. But wonder how much of her donations are really going to the.cause.
well, it’s good to draw attention to the fact that slavery still exists in some parts of the world. Those who want the US to pay reparations for slavery should really work towards fighting slavery where it still exists.
Did the money go to Al and Jesse???
“$101,320 that she donated to a nonprofit dedicated to ending child slavery.”
Is China on that list? Poor kid is probably selling lemonade from containers made with slave labor from China.
I thought maybe she was running an affirmative action bake sale.
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