Brennan Williams' delivery van is hard to miss. It's wrapped in lemons, with his name across the side and his slogan, "The Premium Blend," along the bottom.

He's been making lemonade since he was 9. That's when he set up his first stand for Lemonade Day. Eleven years later, his lemonade is on grocery store shelves, and he's getting ready for what he calls the brand's official launch.

The free celebration runs from 3 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 11, at the Addis Community Center, 7520 La. 1. It includes complimentary tastings, a ribbon cutting with the West Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce, a meet-and-greet with the Brennan's Lemonade team, giveaways and light bites.

"That's where I live, that's where my brand first started," Williams said of picking Addis. "It's home."

From a corner stand to store shelves

Williams is 20 now and a student at Southeastern Louisiana University. He said Lemonade Day was simple. You set up a stand on your street, put up signs and sell lemonade. People liked it, so he kept coming back.

His recipe changed a lot along the way.

"Nothing's never perfect," he said. "It got up to a point where, OK, this is where I'm at. This is the taste I like."

Then customers started telling him to get it into stores. So he did. The first one was Benedetto's Market in Addis. He said Brennan's Lemonade is now sold in eight stores on both sides of the river.

Stores carry three flavors: regular, strawberry and ocean raspberry, which he describes as a blue raspberry. Two more, watermelon and green apple, are available at his family's business. Strawberry is the top seller. It's his favorite, too.

The family shop in Brusly

That family business is S.A.B.'s Snowball Shoppe in Brusly. The letters stand for the three Williams brothers: Sidney, Aaron and Brennan. The family has run it since 2012.

Williams said watching his parents run the shop is what made him want a business of his own. So why lemonade and not snowballs?

"You gotta be different," he said. "They got a lot of snowball stands around here."

His parents set up meetings and help with networking. Williams said they're the biggest part of the business right now, and they've helped him since he was 9. He handles the rest himself.

"The making, the bottling, the delivering, the networking," he said. "The hard part is everything about the business."

He has no plans to hire for now. He said he wants to keep it in the family and look at hiring as the business grows.

When it gets hard, he leans on something his parents always told him.

"If it was easy, everybody could do it," he said.

What 'official launch' means

Williams said the launch marks the move into mass production. That means producing at a faster rate and on a bigger scale.

It also comes with a full rebrand: new recipes, new bottling, new labels and two new products.

Part of that work runs through FOODii, the LSU AgCenter's food product incubator. Williams said it helps small businesses make bigger batches before they're ready for mass production. He said the recipe built to scale up is still in the works.

His brand slogan is on the flyer for Sunday's event: "The Premium Blend."

"It's not your average lemonade," he said.

In five years, Williams said he wants Brennan's Lemonade in airports, big grocery chains and gas stations. Getting there, he said, means more marketing, more networking and getting comfortable in places that aren't comfortable at first.

"It's what I'm doing right now," he said. "The official launch. The mass production."

More information is at brennanslemonade.com.