BizOrigin

When life gives me lemons, I make lemonade, lemon meringue pie, lemon rosemary chicken while I am sipping tequila with lemon.

But what if life gave me lemons as the main resource for my business? I need to come up with a business plan using the lemons!

Here are a few ideas:

• Start a lemonade stand! Call it Citrus-elixir and see if PinkBerry or Starbucks would acquire you.
• make lemon confectionary (lemon drops, lemon pie, lemon bars…)
• get the juice out, paint the skins gold and sell it on eBay
  (Bonus if you can make the peels look like virgin Mary)
• Shave the lemon zest and sell it as potpourri
• Plant the seeds and wait - in 30 years you will have a lemon orchard
• Sell the lemons as a spare battery for a digital clock; work with big three auto makers to see if lemon batteries can be used to power electric cars.

• Sell lemons as a miracle product to clean metalllic surfaces
• Sell it as a all purpose cleaning product for kitchen - clean your cutting board, counter tops, microwave, garbage disposal.. it really works.
• Sell it as a natural highlighter for hair
• Sell it as miracle anti-aging product
• package the juice and sell it as “invisible ink”
• Make invisible ink printer and sell overpriced ink cartridge

• Sell it to all the banks as a replacement for little moist-pads that they have to help the teller count money
• Create a recipe for lemonade and sell the recipe as a digital download
• write a book on 200 uses of lemons and sell it on Amazon
• figure out a way to use lemons as bio fuel; ask congress for reaserch money or bailout money
• Use it as a collateral and get a loan to start another business (OK, this would have worked in 2007, but not so much in 2009)
• Buy forward contracts for lemon delivery in 2010 and manipulate price of the lemons to strike it rich

But my favorite business idea for using lemons is: put ads on the lemon skins to monetize it. If you can’t find sponsors, just put google adsense on it.