I passed a lemonade stand today. I wasn’t thirsty, but I gave the kids a dollar anyway to help support their weekend venture. It was worth it, because it gave me the idea for this post.

When I was much younger, my brother and two friends tried our hands at the lemonade business. Only, we didn’t camp out on a corner. We went where the business was: the train station. Our location strategy worked. Thirsty commuters returning home from a long day of work and a 45-minute train ride on the LIRR appreciated a cool drink for a quarter. (We were young, but we knew our audience.) We were raking it in. BUT….

There were two competing cab companies at the station: a yellow cab company and a blue cab company. Same cars. Same rates. No clear point of difference whatsoever. Commuters getting off the escalator could either go left for yellow or right for blue. We just happened to set up our makeshift shopping cart stand on the yellow side. And that’s all that was needed to drive business the yellow way. Commuters saw us, purchased a drink then hopped in a yellow cab. 

The yellow cabbies loved us. The blue cabbies hated us. A fistfight nearly broke out when they tried to have us removed. I’m not kidding. Eventually, the cops were called and we were evicted.

To this day, I wonder if either cab company ever thought about adding anything like its own lemonade stand to create a point of difference and sway customers its way. – Glen