While our kids may have to sell pizza kits, popcorn, wrapping paper — you name it — for school fundraising, I rarely see little ones trying to make money of their own. When is the last time you’ve driven by a neighborhood lemonade stand?
Last fall, the hubby and I were grooming our front garden and realized it was becoming overwhelmed with agave “pups”. My husband, Mike, LOVES his agave plants. When we moved to Texas, he totally bought into all things southwestern, including agaves. You can’t grow them them in the northeast (where we are from) so it’s a unique experience for us.
That being said, he wasn’t about to toss those small agaves.
Instead, K’GAVE (kids agaves) was born!
Since the plants were big enough to re-home, we decided to plant the entrepreneurial seed in our kiddos! Cody, Ansley and Teagan dug up, potted and groomed the agave pups for resale; their version of a “lemonade stand”.
Of course we helped, but we really wanted them to lead the process.
We took inventory of how many agaves we had and then went to buy supplies. After pricing agaves at local nurseries, the kids decided on competitive prices based on the size of their plants.
Using Mike’s design talent, we created a logo. The K’Gave logo represents our family with five leaves; each of us colored one leaf to put together for the final design.
We made signs, videos and social media posts to advertise our plant sale. This was a great glimpse into marketing and advertising. The kids were SO excited! They set up a stand and arranged the agaves in groupings.
Thankfully, we have some good friends who drove by our stand to support our kids. We got lucky with some neighbors as well. The kids wound up making $120 ($40 each) on that day. After that, we had a few other sales of individual pups.
It was so fun for Mike and I to watch the kids’ excitement throughout the entire process and then, to see how each of them handled the money they made. We talked about the pros and cons of spending, saving and donations — an important lesson in and of itself.
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to save them, most of our agaves (the moms and kids) died in February’s winter storms. This also served as a learning lesson for the kids. Like so many other businesses taking a hit during this pandemic, some just didn’t and won’t survive.
Our kids were sad when we had to trash the plants. But it IS spring and we’ve already seen a few new pups peeking out of the ground! Give it a few months and K’Gave will be back in business! We may even serve lemonade at our plant stand;)
Such Pretty Faces 