Sometimes an idea shows up when you’re not even looking for it.
Camp Lemonade begins in the most everyday place you can imagine: the drive home after picking my daughter up from summer camp.
She was giving me the full update: what her cabin was like, the activities, the friends, the drama, etc. In the middle of all of that, she mentioned something casually:
“I really liked the camp lemonade.”
It could have been a passing comment, but I am a marketer at heart, so my brain heard something different.
“ Like a brand named Camp Lemonade?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “No just lemonade they had."
But the phrase stuck with me. Camp Lemonade.
It sounded nostalgic, simple, fun; the kind of name that already feels like a memory.
By the time we got home, I was curious enough to start searching. Was there a company called Camp Lemonade? Camp Beverage? Camp Drinks? Anything close?
Nothing.
Beyond a couple of distant literal "camps". Nothing.And just like that, Camp Lemonade moved from a casual comment in the backseat to a real idea with real potential.
The brand has grown from there, shaped by nostalgia, small-batch craftsmanship, and the feeling of summer you don’t have to wait for. But at its core, it started with something refreshingly simple:
My daughter enjoyed the lemonade at camp.
And that one sentence opened the door to something new.