Custom Lemonade Trailers
Fresh-squeezed lemonade and chamoyada builds for the fair circuit, the festival lot, and the swap meet -- HCD-insignia units squared away by 916 Concession so you roll the day plates are due.
A lemonade trailer lives and dies by the season. When the county fair opens, the carnival sets up, or the festival weekend hits, you want a long line and a fast pour -- not a unit stuck in plan check. 916 Concession builds custom lemonade trailers for operators across California: fresh-squeezed citrus, strawberry and mango and watermelon, and the chamoy-and-Tajin chamoyada upsells that move hard in the Hispanic market. We build the shell, set the press and the cold dispensers, run the water and power, and carry the HCD insignia and county-ready blueprints. You bring the menu and the booth fee. We hand you a unit that opens the gate looking like it has done a hundred dates already.
Most lemonade builds center on a commercial citrus press -- a manual lever press for lower volume, or a powered auto-juicer like a Zummo or Sunkist on the high-volume fair units. Cold beverage dispensing runs from clear gravity dispensers up to refrigerated jet-spray or bubbler dispensers, often a triple-bowl setup on premium builds. We add large insulated ice bins, under-counter or chest refrigeration to hold lemons, strawberries, and purees, and an optional ice maker if your volume justifies it. Prep gets a dedicated counter with cutting boards and a citrus reamer. Premium fair builds layer in a frozen-slush machine for chamoyadas and mangonadas plus a rim-dip station stocked for chamoy and Tajin. Sink package is a three-compartment sink with a separate handwash sink, as code requires.
Electrical typically lands at 30 to 50 amps single-phase. A simple lemonade pour stays on the low end, but once you add jet-spray dispensers, an ice maker, and refrigeration, the draw climbs toward 50 amps or a small dedicated generator -- which is common for fair and carnival lots without reliable shore power. On water, the unit carries fresh and grey tanks plus a water heater, feeding the three-compartment sink and the separate handwash sink. California code requires the grey-water tank to be sized equal to or larger than the fresh tank, and we plumb every build that way so the holding capacity never trips an inspection.
A trailer built for the season, not the calendar
Lemonade is event-driven work. You make your year at the county fair, the music festival, the carnival midway, the swap meet, and the Saturday sporting event -- a handful of high-traffic weekends where a fast, cold pour and a clean booth separate you from the cart next to you. That rhythm shapes the build. The unit has to set up quick, hold ice and product through a hot afternoon, and pour faster than the line grows. It also has to handle the upsell menu the crowd actually wants: fresh-squeezed lemonade as the anchor, then strawberry, mango, peach, and watermelon, then the chamoyada and mangonada with a chamoy and Tajin rim that the Hispanic-market crowd lines up for. We build for that buyer specifically -- fairs, festivals, carnivals, sporting events, and swap meets -- not a generic food box you have to fight to make work.
Built to your menu and your footprint
Tell us what you pour and how much, and we size the unit around it. A low-volume lemonade operation runs fine on a manual lever press; a high-volume fair build wants a powered auto-juicer that processes roughly twenty to twenty-five fruits a minute so the line never stalls. From there it is dispenser choice, refrigeration, ice capacity, and whether you want a frozen-slush machine and rim-dip station for chamoyadas. 916 Concession builds any size -- our most-ordered shell is the 7x14, but lemonade units commonly run compact, from a 7x11 up to an 8x16, and carnival roll-off operators sometimes want something as small as an 8x8. The interior is finished in county-approved, food-safe cleanable cladding, wiped down between events without soaking up product or odor. Cold-only menu, so there is no cooking line or hood to engineer.
Two approvals -- know which one is ours
There are two separate clearances on a concession trailer, and operators mix them up constantly. The first is the unit itself: in California, the trailer has to meet Title 25 and carry an HCD insignia confirming the build, plumbing, and electrical are to state code. That is 916 Concession's lane -- we engineer to it, build to it, and the insignia comes with the unit. The second is your health permit, issued by the county environmental health department where you operate. That permit is yours to pull and yours to keep current. We make it as painless as possible: every unit ships with county-ready blueprints showing the three-compartment sink, separate handwash sink, water capacities, and finishes your inspector needs to see. You submit, schedule the inspection, and run the permit -- but you walk in with a unit already built to pass.
About six weeks, then we bring it to you
A typical lemonade build runs around six weeks from locked spec to finished unit. That window moves with inspection scheduling, since HCD timing is not something anyone fully controls, so we keep you posted as dates firm up rather than promising a hard day we cannot guarantee. On the registration side, California issues temporary tags first and mails permanent plates after -- 916 Concession handles the DMV paperwork on both stages so you are not standing in a line. When it is ready, we deliver statewide with in-house transport. That means a dedicated crew we run with on every build, not a stranger off a load board -- the same people who know how to set a concession unit down level and ready to plug in. Financing is available through third-party lenders we work with; rates and terms come from them, not from us.
Build your Lemonade Trailer
Tell us your menu and timeline. 916 Concession builds the unit, sets the California HCD insignia, and provides the county-ready blueprints.
Prefer to talk? Call 7758951064.