Soup on Saturday Club

Enough discussion has been generated about references I made about a small project we have been working on, that I must simply blog to share with all. Earlier this summer our oldest son who is 9 ½ came up with an idea. Now he has always been full of ideas and creativity is one thing he is not lacking. He wanted to put up a Soup Shack in front of our house to sell soup as opposed to a lemonade stand. I just can’t envision this shack and I’m not so sure I would be fond of a lemonade stand either. Trying to be good parents and not squash his creativity we tried to discuss it in more realistic terms, thinking the idea might eventually die. It didn’t. He really liked the idea and it continued to surface as the summer progressed. One thing that frustrated him was that he wanted to do it NOW. But we kept saying that summer is not a time to try and make money selling soup. I just couldn’t picture myself driving down a road and seeing a sign for SOUP in July while sweat is dripping down my back from loading groceries into the hot car. Granted this summer has been fantastic so that didn’t happen much. I wouldn’t have pulled over to buy any, but I must admit I don’t pull over for lemonade either even though I sold it as a kid in front of my house.

Each time the topic surfaced again we discussed it further and slowly developed a plan for him. There was plenty of opportunity to talk about many aspects of having a business as well as his ultimate purpose for doing so (which he is still trying to figure out as are we). The plan included a manageable effort in that he would make soup on the first Saturday of each month for four months and sell by pre-orders. We picked the best four months of the year, September through December. We decided on a small variety of soups and then came up with what we hoped would be catchy names for them. Here are the soups:

September 6th Harvest Creamy Tomato
October 4th Farmers Market Vegetable
November 1st Bountiful Chicken Noodle
December 6th Festive Cheesy Potato

We intentionally started off with only telling a few people so we weren’t overwhelmed. We had just the right amount of orders yesterday and enjoyed making the soup together. We figure if we are going to the effort to teach a few things with this project we might as well really pack in the lessons. I made a spreadsheet for him to track orders, expenses, incoming money etc. It will then automatically figure his profit, how much tithing he owes. The amount he pays for tithing is 10% and he will also save an additional 10% to donate to a charity of his choice. He is still thinking about what that will be. The remainder will go to his education and missionary fund savings. It’s not like he is rolling in the dough but it’s a great place to start learning that every penny earned has a value and how to properly spend and save.

Now that you have heard more than enough about our fun new Soup on Saturday Club here is the most interesting part of all. Our son actually does not like soup. He has begun to gain more of an appreciation for it as we have tried recipes for him to taste test. So he is getting there but he would much prefer a can of Chicken Noodle. I would much rather have home made. So while we figure out why he has such interest in running a soup operation when he doesn’t even like soup that well I will sing the jingle: hmm hmm good, hmm hmm good, that’s what Daniel’s soup is hmm hmm good. Maybe someday he will agree.