What to Know
- Gourmonade is the $8 lemonade stand in San Francisco's Mission District
- Vicktor Stevenson and his wife squeeze and bottle the lemonade fresh every morning
- Gourmonade is initially open Friday-Sunday with a growing range of flavors
Vicktor Stevenson has been causing quite a stir in San Francisco's Mission District with his $8 bottles of fresh-squeezed lemonade, served from a tiny storefront at 20th and Valencia St.
"Gourmonade" may be the priciest lemonade you've ever tasted — and also the most painstakingly made. In fact, until recently, Stevenson was squeezing every lemon by hand. He finally got an electric juicer after pulling a muscle in his back.
Stevenson doesn't do anything halfway — so when he got an inexplicable craving for lemonade in the middle of a New York snowstorm, the idea stuck with him until he could make it happen in grand form. Now, just in time for summer, he's opened a lemonade stand that'll put up serious competition for the kids selling Minute Maid in the driveway — after going to bartending school, business boot camp, and enlisting his wife to help with bottling and labeling.
Not long after opening his business, Stevenson had a run-in with San Francisco police, who believed he was an intruder breaking into his own store. Stevenson, who is black, said in a Facebook video that it was "just another day in America," and has received an outpouring of support from neighbors since the incident.
Watch the video above to meet Stevenson and see how Gourmonade is made!
