Lemonade Stand Game Review

Lemonade Stand Game Background

Lemonade Stand is a simple retro-styled business simulation game drawing inspiration from the similarly named 1973 game developed by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium. Like the game that inspired it, it introduces players school-aged and above to the core mechanics of business. Run the quintessential young person’s starter business at a street corner come rain or shine and serve up a refreshing cup to passersby. How much profit can you earn in the time limit provided?

The game is fairly similar to our other business sim, Coffee Shop, only it involves a different beverage and has a few gameplay differences.

How to Play Lemonade Stand

Essential Controls

To select, left click with your mouse or tap on the touchscreen with your fingers. On the right side of the welcome screen, select the number of days you want to play to begin. Operate each of the game’s controls by selecting them.

The set up screen shows you the current day, your current balance, and the current temperature and weather conditions in the immediate area. Use this information to set your parameters for the workday.

Setting Up

Select the buy button below the stock menu on the left to buy the supplies you need to make cups of lemonade. There are four items needed to make lemonade: sugar, lemons, ice, and paper cups. You must have at least one lemon and one cup to sell lemonade.

To sell, your supplies must match the recipe you create. To adjust the amount of supplies per cup, select the recipe button on the bottom left corner of the screen, then select the arrows on each parameter to increase or decrease the amount used. The game helpfully indicates how many cups you can make with the parameters you chose. You cannot adjust the recipe once the day begins.

You can also change the price of each cup from the recipe menu. The price of each cup changes in increments of 5 cents. Unlike with the recipe itself, you can also change the price during the workday itself. Do this by selecting the plus or minus buttons in the price menu on the bottom left corner of the workday screen.

Once you’re satisfied, select Start Day on the bottom right corner to begin the workday. You can select the play button near the clock on the top right corner of the workday screen to increase the game speed. The workday lasts from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM (18:00 in-game). At the end of the day, you’ll receive a report on your customers and the amount of profit you’ve made for the day.

If you find yourself unable to continue, you can select the Bankrupt button on the bottom right corner to quit the game.

Basic Gameplay Advice

Basic Concepts

This game shares many aspects with the 1973 original and others inspired by it. The game is divided into days, where your ability to make money is determined based on how the game’s parameters interact. You can play through 3 available game lengths (7, 14, and 30 days). Each game length has its own records, which are saved automatically each time you end the game with a game over.

This game has 5 production parameters (represented by ingredients and supplies, plus the price), which parallel the 3 featured in the original game from the 1970s (which are flyers, cups, and price). These values are also similar to the ones used in another game with a similar theme, Lemonade Tycoon. A key part of the game is understanding how much to invest in within a single day. You must make enough cups to sell based on demand and make adjustments to each cup you sell based on the prevailing weather for the day.

Like its predecessors, this game incorporates the concept of perishable goods. The items you buy for one workday may not necessarily be useful the following day. A key difference between this game and other business sims like it is in how it manages the perishables. Unlike in other games (including Coffee Shop on our site), only one resource, ice, actually decays. Lemons will not spoil and sugar will not get coated with ants.

The game retains the simplified approach in its gameplay compared to other games. There are no upgrades available unlike in Lemonade Tycoon, and the game offers no endless mode or complicating factors such as competitors. This game also has no adverse events such as wind, street closures, and lightning strikes, which are occasional hazards in its 1973 namesake.

Weather Conditions

The game’s weather determines both the amount of demand and the recipe preferred by the customers. Customers in freezing days would rather have no ice served in their drinks and a lot of ice in hot days. The weather does not have a predictable pattern; you must look at the weather forecast and temperature to make informed choices at the start of each work day.

Unlike some similar games, this one does not feature any graphical differences when depicting various weather conditions.

Popularity and Profit

Making a profit is the only true victory condition in the game. This is calculated based on the difference between your total income minus your expenses. The game determines how well you perform based on the amount of profit you make at the end of the game period. If you strike a net loss throughout the play period or otherwise go bankrupt, you’ve lost the game. Likewise, your performance assessment is better the bigger your profits are.

Affecting your ability to profit is your pricing and popularity. Customers are drawn toward a more popular stand and away from higher prices. Customer satisfaction, meanwhile, drives your popularity upward.

Use the emojis at the menu on the bottom center to determine your stand’s popularity. Your stand’s popularity grows each time the customers are satisfied with your recipe; these are represented by the smiling and elated emojis. Meanwhile, it stays stagnant when a significant number of people don’t particularly like the recipe for the day, represented by the green disgust emoji. A frowny face represents a customer who wasn’t served at all, whereas a sad face with a dollar sign indicates a customer off-put by the prices.

Your web browser automatically saves your best ratings and financial performance. You can see them in the game over screen.

Advanced Playing Tips & Strategy

Although the people’s negative responses don’t affect your popularity directly, they offer clues to what the customers would like in their recipes. If the majority of customers for the day disliked the recipe, you ought to change it, whereas a well-loved recipe on a specific should be continued the next time that weather pattern rolls in.

Although the game allows you to put more than one lemon or cup of sugar in the recipe, we generally recommend using just one of each per cup of lemonade. Customers generally don’t mind having only one of each in their orders, and doing so allows you to stretch out your supplies.

To maximize your profits, keep your price range between 40 and 55 cents at any given time. Customers can be quite fickle with pricing and will dismiss your product as “too expensive” even if you price it comparatively low. You can play through an entire session with little to no price changes.

Although you can save more per unit by buying bulk, we recommend doing this infrequently. Ice, the game’s only perishable, should only be bought in bulk if you expect to make a lot of sales.

Educational Aspects

Much like our other business sim, this game simplifies the elements of a food service business to its core components to make its fundamentals easier for younger players to understand. Players must make business decisions to help their business survive and flourish.

Among the many core concepts in business that players can learn include the following:

• Setting prices based on supply and demand
• Setting a budget on supplies
• Making changes in response to customer preferences and inclement conditions
• Managing losses from spoilage

Player Age Recommendation

This game is suitable for players school-aged and above. We recommend this game for fans of simple business sims.