We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jalynn Haynie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jalynn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

I think family business is the best business. Not only are you working closely with the people you love and who love you, but you’re creating that generation wealth together. It’s not perfect, you still may bump heads along the way which is probably going to happen anyway but it’s the better way of doing business in my opinion because you’re looking out for the greater good and security of the family. My business was actually started for my children! So I’m all about including your kiddos in the business. And we’re on are second year now but since we’re still pretty new we get so much help from our family members. There’s a lot of turning wheels in the lemonade business believe it or not lol My parents jump in and help all the time, my siblings help when they’re free, even my cousins and aunts help out. It keeps things fun and interesting and you’re not loosing any quality time from them. My parents are entrepreneurs, my mom is a beautician and has been for over 25 years. My dad works at the Chrysler plant here for almost 30 years but he’s had his own businesses outside of that as well including a lawn care business and makes fried turkeys for people on Thanksgiving. Both of my brothers have started small businesses themselves as well including a juice bar and supplying vending machines to companies locally. We’re all pretty much like minded in that way and we all support one another.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My personal story coming into all this is a little different. I’m 27 and I’ve been working in healthcare for 9 years and particularly dialysis for 6. Last summer I wanted to find something new to spend more time with my kids and make up for me cutting back on my hours. I thought about starting to work for myself for a couple years now so I played around with some small business ideas that could be fun and easy enough for us to do together and also be beneficial for their future. We ended up starting a small lemonade stand in my parents driveway July 2023, not your average country time though but fresh squeezed refreshing lemonade and we’ve been slinging lemonades ever since! I’m an over the top mom and my kids are right on board with me so it was the perfect thing and we love it. They are so eager to do it and they look forward to events every weekend, I literally get asked all the time “when are we doing the lemonade stand again?” lol We started out with just 3 flavors but we’ve gotten up to 12 flavors now, besides your classic lemonade, 5 specialty drinks and we do themed flavors depending on the event. During the colder seasons we add hot beverages to the menu like cider, cocoa, and coffee. We purchased a popcorn and shaved ice machine for an add on option at events. This year we are perfecting our eggnog recipe and will be excited to add that to the menu as well !

Our business is growing rapidly and I’m very happy about it. It’s amazing to see such a small idea developing so successfully. Trust me it doesn’t feel like work at all and that’s how it’s supposed to be. Our Honeys customers are so friendly and supportive and we always look forward to seeing them!

I will say the hardest part of it all is the preparation for the set ups and the take downs. We operate out of a tent so it becomes exhausting before you even get started, especially on the hot summer days. Luckily though, this past July we finished up remodeling a trailer so that we can officially go mobile and that was really a feel good moment. We are better equipped to travel a little further for events, which we did in August and it was a awesome turn out. We are even able to do 2 events at a time, now that we have the tent and trailer.

For next year, we plan to go full time with the business and schedule more events of course but also take part in setting up at some of our local sports games, offer fundraising options, doing more private events and taking the trailer on the road more. I’m so excited to see what’s in store for us.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think having compassion in what you do helps build a great reputation for your business. It truly shows when you’re vending. We all have experience being someone’s customer so keeping that in mind when you’re the business owner really plays a big role. It’s a very simple recipe for lemonade but took some trial and error to perfect it for the different taste pallets you’ll run into, along with size options and flavors because one size doesn’t fit all here. You just have to care about the product you’re putting out if you want returning and referring customers. Yes you can take the easy way out in some cases but that’s not going to make you the talk of the town in the best way. We also make sure that the customers experience is always pleasant, the kids really help out with that one lol And if anything happens to not be right with our product we make sure to fix it with a smile on our face! We make every cup with love.

We’ve hooked up with some other small business owners a few times and put our products together sometimes to make an even better deal, or we shop from our craft vendor friends and let them make our merch for us. This year we even had the opportunity to host a book bag giveaway which was so much fun and really nice that we could give back in that way. It’s all about community!

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

The initial funding was probably the hardest because we didn’t do any loans or grants. I worked my full time job still so it was sort of one of those situations where my job was the funding for my small business. Cost aren’t crazy high in my line of work but it can get pricey all together so we didn’t go above our means to start, we just did the basics. Our very first event became a huge success and got our name out there so we turned a good profit and since then we haven’t run into any major issues funding wise. There’s always still work to be done of course, so my next task is to sit down and research to try and get some funding from our city or try to get some grants to help out with some additions we want to add for next year because I’m always told there’s so much money out there for start up businesses.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/honeyslemonade/profilecard/?igsh=MXI5cjVpbnJ3MjdobQ==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094397927309&mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Other: business email is [email protected]