College grad turns lemons into lemonade with beverage-centric food truck

Erin Doonan wasn’t supposed to be where she is right now. Instead, she was supposed to be interning with Walt Disney World Resort’s event-planning team, as her post-college plan detailed.

Doonan graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 2020, and her careful planning didn’t consider the emergence of a pandemic. The internship she had lined up was canceled, and Doonan, who had moved back home to Laconia, tired of waiting for the world to reorganize according to her plans.

Instead, she bought an old camper — a 1960 Woodsman Coleman — and used it to leapfrog forward to the next phase of her plan, going into business for herself.

“I decided that this was the best opportunity to start my own business,” Doonan said.

The camper had recently been remodeled, which was why she bought it, but it turned out during a post-purchase inspection that the recent work had only been surface-level. Water damage had compromised much of what couldn’t be seen, including the floorboards, so she spent the next nine months working six days a week to break it down and build it back up into something suitable to carry her dreams.

Doonan’s vision was to put her degree in event management into practice. Why did she need a camper more than twice her age? How many other event planners have one?

She said the camper worked into her business plan as “something that would set me apart.” It would also give her a chance to keep a foot in another industry, food service, in which she worked through her high school years.

The mobile bar trend had started to appear in other parts of the country, following the rebirth of the food truck, but Doonan hadn’t seen it arrive in northern New England yet, so she figured she could be at the vanguard, at least regionally.

The name of her company is Pours & Petals — she also offers floral arrangement services — and her expectation was that she would do mostly coffee drinks out of the camper. She does sell a lot of coffee — she’s proud to carry Wayfarer products — but it turns out that another beverage stole the show.

At one of her previous service gigs, she sold a lot of flavored lemonade by squirting a shot of raspberry syrup into a glass of soda fountain lemonade. It was good, but was mostly just high fructose corn syrup with artificial flavorings and food color. How much could she sell if the lemonade was hand-made from scratch? Lots and lots, it turns out.

Pours & Petals is now known for its lemonade. She typically has around 10 flavors on her menu, such as strawberry basil, blackberry mint, blueberry lavender, raspberry lime and honey rose. Her current record is 600 cups of lemonade sold in one day.

The camper and the lemonade seem to have struck two notes of the same chord, she said. Both seem to evoke comforting feelings of nostalgia, but they also are reinvented with a new twist. In addition to beverages, Doonan also serves baked goods and seasonal snacks, and will bring in hot chocolate and apple cider when the weather turns cooler.

The Pours & Petals camper wasn’t intended for public events, but in order to serve food, she had to get a license. So, Doonan figured, why not start the business as a food truck?

But a food truck based around beverages? Who had ever heard of such a thing? Sounds about as successful as an event planner with a camper. In fact, most people that Doonan spoke to thought she was “crazy,” she said.

That is, except for one business, which not only invited her to set up at their Main Street location in Meredith, but also carries her lemonade in their cafe.

“Hermit Woods was one of the first businesses to believe in us before anyone else did,” Doonan said. For much of the summer of 2021, she was slinging lemonade in Meredith, building a following and spreading the word about her business. As she established herself in the beverage world, she also started making inroads as an event planner. 

She now has a couple of employees, was fully booked for weddings this year and is already filling her calendar for 2023. Meanwhile, she’s considering how to scale her business plan to meet a thirsty market, such as by adding another mobile service unit or finding other restaurants that would like to serve her lemonade to their guests.

The past couple of years have been instructive for Doonan. One lesson she’s learned is to have faith in her plan, even if others failed to share in her vision. 

“Once you set your mind to it, do not give up. I thought no one would believe in me,” Doonan said. “I’m really proud of believing in myself.”

She has also learned how to find opportunities in unexpected circumstances. Life gave her lemons, and she knew what to do with them.

“If it wasn’t for the pandemic, this would not exist today,” she said.