Utah Boy Slings "Ice Cold Beer," Has Police Called On Him

Young entrepreneurship is tough. To begin with, you are very small and you have no money. Then you have to come up with a hot idea while working from that difficult baseline. And even if your idea works, and your modest business takes off, you run the risk of getting robbed or violating laws that you didn't yet know existed, because you are young. It's a difficult life.

One boy in Brigham City, Utah understood that controversy sells, and in that spirit, he decided to give his modest sidewalk business the ol' razzle-dazzle. KUTV reports that the unnamed boy set up a stand selling "Ice Cold Beer," with just a bit of misdirection: It was root beer, with the "root" featured in much smaller font than the rest. By figuring out one of the crucial tenets of advertising, in which you accentuate the positives and downplay the negatives, he was able to do a tidy business.

He was also the recipient of a police visit, because whether it was because of his stand's reported setup near a church, or just because of neighbors not respecting a burgeoning local business, several calls were made to local law enforcement, who took it in stride:

Congratulations, Brigham City. You called the cops on a root beer stand. Some real Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window gumshoe work going on here. Wherever you are, Beer Kid, congratulations on your marketing spirit, and it's too bad that your neighbors are some real hall monitors.