Kids prep for Lemonade Day with contest

By PAMELA GRANT

Cove Leader-Press

Young lemonade-making entrepreneurs from the Fort Hood area community whipped up their tastiest creations in a bid to be the best for this year’s Best Tasting Lemonade Contest.

The 12th Annual Best Tasting Lemonade Contest, sponsored by H-E-B, was held at the Stonetree Golf Club Saturday from 10 a.m. until noon. 

To reward all the young entrepreneurs’ hard work on Saturday, each participant received a certificate and goody bag. They also gave out special awards for Best Overall Lemonade, Most Unique Lemonade, and Best Lemonade Presentation

The Best Tasting Lemonade Contest gives the community a sneak peek for Lemonade Day weekend which falls on May 7th and 8th this year.

Judges for this year’s Best Tasting Lemonade Contest were Harker Heights Mayor Spencer Smith, Copperas Cove Mayor Dan Yancey, Executive Director of Public Works for Killeen Jeff Reynolds, Garrison Commander Colonel Chad R. Foster, Chris Albus from Fort Hood Family Housing, Chris Zehr from H-E-B, and Lemonade Day Fort Hood Area Founder Amanda Sequeira. 

Lemonade Day is designed to help teach children of all ages how to start, own, and operate their own businesses—in this case, their own lemonade stand. 

“I think it’s important to teach the youth entrepreneurship and also financial literacy,” said Ally Torres, Director of the Fort Hood area Lemonade Day. “They learn how to handle money, how to talk to people, run their business and sell their products. We also teach them to spend some, save some, and share some.”

Students are encouraged to save some of the money that they earn with their lemonade stand, give some of it to charity, and spend some of it.

“It’s outstanding. The City of Harker Heights supports Lemonade Day,” said Harker Heights Mayor Spencer Smith about the event. “Seeing young children learn entrepreneurship is really good…and It’s a family event which is really good.”

Smith added that he likes the fact that each of the entrepreneurs choose a cause to donate some of their money to afterwards. 

The 3 Bs, winner of the title of Best Overall Lemonade, said that they will be donating money to Foster Love of Bell County. The 3 Bs is a Copperas Cove based lemonade stand ran by siblings, Briana Liles (13), Braelyn Liles (5), and Brayden Liles (11) who was not in attendance at Saturday’s competition.

Their mother, Christy Liles, said that they once fostered a baby and learned that many foster children do not have anything, no brushes, undergarments, or even personal hygiene items.

“They come with literally nothing, not even things that we take for granted every day,” said Liles.

Liles said that she loves Lemonade Day because kids are the future and Lemonade Day teaches them life skills as well as the benefits of hard work. She said that the first year they did the lemonade stand (in addition to the charity), her daughter was working to raise money to purchase a bicycle. 

The Liles siblings have competed in several Best Tasting Lemonade Contests and chose to enter this year with a Hawaiian theme and entered a blue Hawaiian lemonade made with pineapple, coconut, and a secret recipe.

Briana said that she thought their unique lemonade combination was what enabled them to win the contest.

“I tried a lot of the lemonades, and they were pretty good, so we had some good competition,” said Briana.

Anyone wanting to try The 3 Bs lemonade for themselves can find them on Lemonade Day weekend, May 7 and 8 at the Copperas Cove Walmart from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Braelyn Liles said that in addition to their lemonade, to look for their special menu item—pulled pork.

“I think that Lemonade Day is a great event with the great purpose of teaching entrepreneurship to the kids,” said Copperas Cove Mayor Dan Yancey. “It’s just a great way for them to learn to be future leaders.”

Yancey added that he enjoyed getting to try out and enjoy all the different types of lemonade.

“They were all really unique,” said Mayor Yancey. “It was very hard to come up with the one that was the most unique…They were all very good. It amazes me how they come up with some of these recipes.”

Soloman Karch (11) and Aurora Karch (7) received the title of Best Overall Presentation with their patriotically themed stand, The Great Place Lemonade.

“We’re the embodiment of Fort Hood lemonade,” said Soloman Karch.

This was the siblings second year entering the competition. Soloman attributed their win to all of the hard work and dedication that they put in to make their stand great.

Soloman plans to donate a portion of his profits to the Wounded Warrior Project while his sister plans to donate a portion of her profits to the Harker Heights Animal Shelter.

“I wanted to do it because I love animals,” said Aurora. “I don’t want cats or dogs to have no family.”

The family hopes to have their stand at the Clear Creek PX May 7 and 8 from 9:30 a.m. until the PX closes.

Winners of the Best Tasting Lemonade Contest:

Best Overall Lemonade – The 3 Bs

Most Unique – Roland’s Lemonade

Best Overall Presentation – The Great Place Lemonade.