News, Portland lemonade stand runs into health inspectors, needs $120 license to operate. (health care, panels)

[iamscott]

Best Scam Ever!!!!!!!!

[Metlakatla]

Originally Posted by steel7

The inspectors have egg all over their face cause this story is nation wide & LOTS of people think they are bullies.

Of course a lot of people think they're bullies. We live in an age of one sentence news items and instant celebrities, and a kind of cut and dried "us vs. them" mindset concerning anything even remotely political (and what isn't even remotely political is increasingly construed as such).

I wonder how many of those who think the inspectors are "bullies" are even aware of the whole story, or if all they needed to hear was something about a classic American childhood experience being "under attack" by the bureaucracy before the knee jerk reactions set in.

The person who screwed with the classic American childhood experience the most was the mother.

[Get_Uppa]

The scam is she's getting 0.50 a glass for Kool-Aid "lemonade". C'mon now!!

Get yourself some lemons, sugar, and quality water and sell the people Lemonade. Thank You.

[steel7]

Countrytime lemonade is the best. I paid $6.00 for a big container that makes 38 qts. 4 cups=1 qt. 4x38=152 cups x.50 cents ea=76.00. Faucet water is maybe a dollar so her profit would be $69.00 per 152 8oz cups. Thats if she would of used country time. Koolaid lemonade is nasty & a lil pack (20 cents) make 2 qts but you gotta add 1 cup of sugar & sugar costs about $3.00-$4.00 for 4 lbs. Real lemons arent cheap unless you have a lemon tree & the time to make fresh lemonade. The cups cost money too so i just dont see her making alot of money.

[Bluesmama]

Okay, so why would the mother just ASSUME that her daughter could set up a stand for free at a montly street fair??? Just because it's a child??? The adults running the booths needs licenses, don't they???

I don't sympathize with the case just because it's a kid.

[Minervah]

The lemonade stand was the mother's not the child. The child was a front and a very successful one at that. I saw on the local news that they set up the stand elsewhere I think in Milwaukie and they made a bundle through the misguided sympathy of some residents there.

Next week is the Hawthorne Street Fair. As far as I know vendors have to approach the Hawthorne Business Assocation for a license to sell food. Can I go set up a lemonade stand on the street next to the paying vendors? If this mother had been allowed to set up her stand at the Albina fair it would have set a city-wide precent. I wonder now how many will try seeing all the lucrative publicity this mother has gotten.

As Bluesmama stated, just because a kid is involved does not give anyone the right to break an ordinance others have to obey.

[John1960]

News Update.

Controversial lemonade stand makes $1,800

PORTLAND, Ore., Aug. 10 (UPI) -- A 7-year-old Oregon girl whose lemonade stand was shut down by health authorities and reopened with the help of sponsors said she has now made $1,838.31.

Julie Murphy of Oregon City, whose Portland lemonade stand was shut down last month for not having a food safety license and reopened a short time later with the help of radio station KRSK 105.1 and Les Schwab Tire Centers, said she plans to use her profits to bankroll a trip to Disneyland with mother Maria Fife, The (Portland) Oregonian reported Tuesday.

Controversial lemonade stand makes $1,800 - UPI.com

[TechmanOR]

The health inspector did nothing wrong. The mom should have been issued a citation. It's one thing to cook a little extra of something to share with family/friends/neighbors.

Poor food handling can cause people to get sick and the fact that someone handling food is a seven year old girl doesn't magically make their product safe.

They require people who work in restaurants to have a food handler's permit and to get one, they have to pass safe handling practice test. If the girl was just playing in a sandpit tainted by cat crap and started making lemonade, its putting the public at risk.

"nobody's gotten sick" is just as bad of an excuse as "I didn't hit anybody" for someone cited for DUI.

[PNW-type-gal]

I'm more annoyed with the county inspectors for caving and apologizing than I am the closing of the stand. It was at a street fair, in a place where vendors needed a license, not her own front yard.

[Dual Citizen CA-OR]

Originally Posted by PNW-type-gal

I'm more annoyed with the county inspectors for caving and apologizing than I am the closing of the stand. It was at a street fair, in a place where vendors needed a license, not her own front yard.

Well said and I couldn’t agree more.

Kowtowing to uninformed public opinion seems to be the norm now in America. The premature and uncalled for firing of Shirley Sherrod, the lack of a backbone in any of our nationally known Republican leaders to stand up to the extremism of Rush Limbaugh and the dropping of the ‘death panels’ from the recently passed health care reform are just three more current examples.