We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Raushanah El-Amin-Foster a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Raushanah, appreciate you joining us today. So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

Susu Lemonade Crush is a family business, Suhaylah is the CEO, and her brother’s Shuaib is the Chief Marketing Officer and Naim is the Chief Financial Officer. They have an opportunity to work together and understand the business and what it takes to run a successful business. The entire family is involved when we attend Pop Up Shops, they learn customer service, advertising and learn how to interact with customers. It is a good life and business lesson.

Raushanah, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Susu Lemonade Crush was established on August 1, 2020, when my daughter, Suhaylah wanted to start a lemonade business. We worked on perfecting the formula for Strawberry lemonade, and finalized the ingredients in three weeks. The business was started during the pandemic, therefore we ordered 125 (8oz) bottles and attended an event where we sold the lemonade. We sold all of the lemonade in a week, and this is how Susu Lemonade Crush was created. After a year of selling the Strawberry lemonade we decided to add two more flavors, Peach and Blueberry lemonade. The Peach lemonade is seasonal, and the Blueberry and Strawberry lemonade are sold through out the year. This is a family business where the entire family helps with the product, which includes her two brothers.

In January 2022, we launched a new product, Susu’s Coloring Book. Her book has pictures of things she likes to do, such as playing with her friends, her lemonade business and spending time with her family.

I am proud of the business because we have learned a lot, and continue to branch out, with local businesses, by partnering with them and selling in local stores. We are working to increase our followers and scale the business.

We want everyone who drink Susu’s lemonade to fall in love with it, and have a crush on the drink hence, the name Susu Lemonade Crush!

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We currently sale our products on shopify. We have a website that offers all of our products and can be ordered on. We like this platform, because it allows us to easily reach customers, However, we are currently working to expand our customer reach locally, by partnering with local stores.

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

Susu Lemonade Crush business has been funded by Suhaylah’s parents. We started with an initial investment of $200. We have continued to sale our products at Pop Up Shops and different venues, and reinvest our profit back into the business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://susus-lemonade-crush.myshopify.com/
• Instagram: Susu_Lemonade_Crush
• Facebook: Susu_Lemonade_Crush
• Other: None

Image Credits
Pictures are by @zoebeautee