Canadian kid entrepreneurs are growing fast — Lemonade Day Calgary draws 792 this year

A 9-year-old in Calgary started filling Soda Stream canisters for his family to save money. A 6-year-old in Alberta has been running a toy business for three years, selling 3D-printed toys and hand sanitizers. A third grader is working her way toward a trip to Japan and the Philippines.

They're part of a national surge in child entrepreneurs that has researchers, educators and program organizers scrambling to understand why kids are starting businesses younger and in greater numbers than ever before.

Jodi Letkiewicz, an assistant professor of finance at California State University who researches how kids learn about money, said the shift is real. "There's always been kid-preneurs out there … but now it's sort of exploded," she said's Cost of Living.

Lemonade Day Calgary, which supports kids operating lemonade stands, saw participation jump from 164 in 2023 — its launch year in Calgary — to 792 this year. The U.S.-born program came to Canada through Chantelle Little.

Kids Markets, which operates in multiple provinces and lets ages 5 to 17 sell products, held its first event in Millarville near Calgary in July. Similar initiatives exist across Canada: BizKids Market in B.C., Kid2Kid in Toronto, and the Children's Business Fair in Brandon, Manitoba.

Three forces are driving the boom. Social media shows kids what their peers are doing. High cost of living — something kids absorb from dinner-table talk, news coverage and parental stress — motivates them to earn. And YouTube makes business education accessible: kids watch tutorials on starting ventures, pricing products and building brands.

AI tools now handle what once required adult help: generating business ideas, creating names and logos, researching customers, setting prices, building websites and basic bookkeeping.

Letkiewicz notes that kids hear the cost-of-living conversation constantly. "If you think about how often we're talking about the cost of living now, whether it's at the dinner table, the parents talking with friends about something, or they hear it on the news on a radio in the car … they're absorbing that information," she said.

One child's motivation was simple: "I really wanna treat my parents to a good dinner," she said.