The Lemonade Bar - Making Life Sweeter with Imani M-Glover

In celebration of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, we are honored to have interviewed Imani M-Glover to find out what being an entrepreneur means to her while creating and operating a family-owned business! We get to hear how she turns lemons into sweet, sweet lemonade that keeps her business and family thriving.

The Lemonade Bar specializes in fresh squeezed lemonade and organic handcrafted frozen lemonades. Imani and her family work out of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area. Their hands-on creative team loves to create new flavors that excite the palate of many repeat customers! Their fabulous lemonades can be found at farmers markets, weddings, graduations, parties, and more. They pride themselves in using locally grown organic ingredients from farmers within our community.

Imani M-Glover is a client of Port Labs and worked hand-in-hand with our coaches to get the pitch support she needed in order to compete (and win!) at the 1-minute pitch portion of our February Hustle Circle. Come support and watch Imani as she unleashes her 5-minute pitch for a chance to win $500 from Square at our next pitch competition at the next Port Labs Hustle Circle on April 6th, 2022!

Imani and The Lemonade Bar were featured in SalesForce Business two years in a row for 2020/2021 for “Lemonade Week” at Dreamforce in San Francisco. Salesforce celebrates Lemonade Week where future entrepreneurs and innovators learn core business and technology skills by running a business.

Who or what inspired you to be an entrepreneur?

My Mom…she was an entrepreneur. She was a financial planner that owned her own business. Her commitment and drive really made an impression on me. She earned a masters degree in finance, was listed in Who’s Who of Women Book. She gave me the confidence to pursue my own path.

What excites you about The Lemonade Bar?

I love to super exceed folks’ expectations when they try our lemonade.

What is intriguing about The Lemonade Bar that people cannot read about on your website?

We adjust and thrive under pressure, and pray we come out of the fire not smelling like smoke.

How has COVID-19 affected The Lemonade Bar?

The COVID pandemic came just before the busiest part of our year. Shows, graduations and other events were being canceled, and that's where we had been making most of our money. We had to transition and make huge adjustments to our business model. We were forced to adjust and thrive, and we did!

But we’re excited to get back to what we love: serving more of our customers at Farmers Markets, Concerts, Fairs, Festivals, and many more in-person events.

In addition to my work with the Port Labs team, I’m participating in Uptima Business Bootcamp, an Oakland business incubator program for minorities. I've learned so much at Uptima about how to run my business. I learned to create a business plan, a roadmap, and a forecast for the future and many more tools.

It’s been very stressful sometimes. I’ve been challenged with finding reliable help, securing low interest rate funding and grants, and putting effective systems and processes in place.

How has being a woman impacted your ability to launch your business?

The beverage industry still is a dominated by white men, but this little African-American woman is up to the challenge of kicking down doors and beating the odds. Watch out here I come!