The archive · Small Business & Money · Strategic decision · 2021–2024
Parents turn daughter's lemonade stand into a Brooklyn dosa pop-up — $15.6K in a month
A 6-year-old's lemonade stand became Brooklyn Curry Project: weekend dosa pop-ups by two full-time professionals pulling up to $15,600 a month.
Brooklyn Curry Project
What it had to solve
Swetha and Venkat Raju, immigrants from Bengaluru working as a software engineer and a real-estate lawyer, missed the regional food of India. In May 2021 their 6-year-old daughter wanted a lemonade stand at Fort Greene Park Green Market.
How it works
In May 2021, 6-year-old Mahati Raju wanted to run a lemonade stand at Fort Greene Park Green Market in Brooklyn, so her mother Swetha made masala dosas for her to sell alongside drinks. Customers' reactions — eyes widening at a proper South Indian crepe — gave the family an idea, and a month later Swetha and her husband Venkat arrived with butane stoves and began cooking dosas live.
Within months, hundreds of people were lining up each Saturday, sometimes waiting hours for a $10 dosa. Both parents kept their full-time jobs — Swetha as a software engineer, Venkat as a real-estate lawyer — and treated the pop-up as a demanding side hustle: grocery runs on weeknights, six hours of prep every Friday, and a Saturday service from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The numbers are documented: in June 2024 the business brought in more than $15,600, and over the year median monthly revenue was over $8,100 collected via Venmo, with additional cash sales and a roughly 12% profit margin. The couple now cook from a commercial kitchen, sell dosas at $12, and run a monthly seated lunch.
Their stated difference is regionality: New York's Indian restaurants all taste alike, they argue, while Bengaluru's food is specific. Spices come from farmers in India, including Swetha's parents' farm. The line, they say, has become a community — people have met friends and future spouses waiting for dosas.
Why it lands
- It is a tiny, low-risk entry into food: a child's lemonade stand became a real revenue business with no restaurant lease at the start.
- Live cooking as theater — butane stoves at a market stall — generated a queue that did the marketing for free.
- The regional-food angle filled a gap in a market full of homogenized Indian restaurants, giving the product a reason to exist.
- It proves a side hustle can reach $15,600 a month while both founders keep demanding full-time jobs.
What it did
In June 2024 the pop-up brought in more than $15,600; median monthly revenue was over $8,100 via Venmo alone, with a roughly 12% profit margin, on about 20+ hours a week each — on top of full-time jobs.
What you can take
A market stall is a low-risk food test; live cooking turns a stand into spectacle that builds its own line, and regional specificity gives a saturated market a reason to queue.
Since then
The Rajus continue running the weekly pop-up and monthly seated lunch while holding their day jobs, and have started a crowdsourced fundraising campaign and are scouting locations to open a sit-down restaurant. CNBC Make It documented the figures in March 2025.
Sources
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