When the Cherry Trees Bloom, A Little Economy Booms
Six-year-old Scotty Lefkowitz and his big sister, Gwen, 11, had all the makings for a perfect lemonade stand. Until their neighbors came along.</br></br>The siblings had set up a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies, fresh strawberries and a cold pitcher of lemonade on a table underneath the cherry blossoms in front of their home in the tony Kenwood neighborhood of Bethesda. Their laminated signs flapped in the warm spring breeze: $1 for lemonade.</br></br>But a few houses down Dorset Avenue, the neighbors were selling for just 25 cents a cup, undercutting them by a whopping 75 percent. So Scotty and Gwen quickly rethought their business strategy -- they would advertise their bigger cups and offer free refills.</br></br>Such are the economics of the lemonade stand. Every year when the cherry blossoms peak, the normally peaceful subdivision is thronged with visitors who come to see the snowy blooms on the 1,200 Japanese Yoshino trees that line these streets. And every year, the children of Kenwood milk it for all it's worth.</br></br>"It teaches them commerce, and it teaches them a lot about being resourceful," said Scotty and Gwen's mother, Lori. "They get into it because it's their little enterprise."