Lemonade stands aren’t just for kids looking to make a few bucks selling cups to neighbors from the front yard. Chattanoogans Michael and Beth Miller of Miller’s Original Lemonade recently surpassed $1 million in lemonade sales at the Chattanooga Market.
The achievement was marked by the presentation of a commemorative banner, along with a metal lemon sculpture designed by a fellow market vendor that reads, “Squeezed Out a Million.”
“It’s really heavy,” Miller says of the sculpture, which he affectionately dubbed “Lemmy the Lemon.”
Miller got his start as a food vendor slinging sausages, but he felt he could do lemonade better and wanted to sell something that produced less waste. So in the summer of 1993, he launched Miller’s Original Lemonade.
“Back in the day, there weren’t enough events in Chattanooga to really make a living doing something like this,” says Miller, who used to travel around the region to peddle his lemonade in cities such as Knoxville, Nashville and Birmingham.