Alice families register young entrepreneurs for Lemonade Day Coastal Bend

At Coastal Bend College in Alice, families spent Tuesday evening turning a lemonade stand into a first business plan. The June 2 registration event, held from 4 to 6 p.m., helped parents and children sign up for Lemonade Day Coastal Bend and learn what comes next before the big event on June 20.

For Hope Frances Rangel, vice president of economic empowerment and city director for Lemonade Day Coastal Bend, the point reaches well beyond selling a cup of lemonade. She said the program is a curriculum-based opportunity that teaches children “everything from A to Z about how to own and operate a business.” In practice, that means young participants are getting an early lesson in budgeting, marketing, customer service, financial literacy, responsibility and planning, all through a stand they can build and run themselves.

That business training is part of why the annual event has become a regional fixture. Lemonade Day Coastal Bend 2026 will be the 14th annual edition, and organizers say the free curriculum is being offered to 1,200 participants across Nueces, San Patricio, Aransas, Bee, Kleberg and Jim Wells counties. The program’s national mission is to help youth become business leaders, social advocates, community volunteers and forward-thinking citizens, and the Alice stop gave local families a chance to take the first step from registration to launch.

The stakes are real, even if the setting is simple. Participants keep all the money they earn from their lemonade stands, and business results are used to determine a local Entrepreneur of the Year. That winner then advances to the national Entrepreneur of the Year contest, giving a child’s neighborhood stand a path to larger recognition.

The Coastal Bend effort has already shown it can draw a crowd. A previous celebration featured more than 50 lemonade stands across Corpus Christi, Sinton, Alice and Aransas Pass, a sign that the program has built a strong footprint across the region. The Chamber Foundation also said Lemonade Day Coastal Bend earned the 2025 National Goal Getter Award, underscoring the growth behind the program’s youth entrepreneurship push.

For Alice and the rest of Jim Wells County, the value is in what happens before the first sale. A registration table at Coastal Bend College became a starting line, where children began learning how to turn an idea into a business and a stand into a first step toward confidence.