11-Year-Old's Lemonade Now on Sale at Whole Foods

A sixth-grader in Austin, Texas, has turned a lemonade stand into a booming business now that she has expanded her reach to multiple states through a deal with Whole Foods, reports Time. Mikaila Ulmer's secret recipe for BeeSweet
Lemonade comes from her great-grandmother, and contains flax seed and honey as the sweetener. Things really got going last year when she was just 9 and took the locally popular lemonade to ABC's Shark Tank and earned a $60,000 investment. The Whole Foods deal gets her lemonade on the shelves at 55 Whole Foods in states including Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida, reports NBC News.

Mikaila's lemonade isn't just tasty. After being stung by bees twice in a week at the age of 4, she "was terrified" of the insect but soon developed a fascination of them, and has decided to use local honey in her lemonade—and direct some of the proceeds to help the dwindling bee population. Her success even earned her a spot at at the White House Kids' State Dinner last summer, reports CNBC, and she announced earlier this month, while being honored with other black innovators at the South by Southwest Festival, that she's expanded distribution even further thanks to a deal with United Natural Foods, reports Atlanta Blackstar. She says she works on her business after she finishes her homework and on weekends and holidays. (See why the government forced this girl to shut down her stand.)newser