What happens when the lemonade stand with a $10 licence poisons people? https://foodsafetyinfosheets.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/6-1...
Death from norovirus is rare, but it does happen.
https://www.cdc.gov/features/norovirus/index.html
> CDC estimates that each year in the United States norovirus causes 19 to 21 million illnesses, 56,000 to 71,000 hospitalizations, and 570 to 800 deaths.
At most, you can have a proviso in the license that they have to display a notice that the stand is not inspected or regulated by the health department.
I don't know if the risks from kids running lemonade stands is high enough to justify regulation, but presumably all the above makes a business with a $300 license less likely to poison customers.
It lessens risk, but doesn't eliminate it, so the original question still stands: what does happen when the $300 license holder poisons someone?
There's no point in making a license affordable for kids if they still need to have completely unaffordable liability insurance.
It's pretty clear that when the OP suggested a $10 license they were also suggesting removing other regulatory costs. The proposal is useless otherwise.
I suggest you travel more broadly. I'm guessing you've never been to a part of the world with a vibrant street vendor scene, because once you have, you weep over the sad sterile* world we've legislated here in the US.
* Excepting the mass salmonella poisonings we get from large-scale mechanized food preparation.
Results start on page 61 and are broken down by region. They report impact of food-related illness in terms of years of life lost. America, Canada, W. Europe, and Australia are in the range of ~10 years lost per 100k people to food related illness. Africa is around 1200 per 100k and SE Asia is at 800 per 100k.
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/199350/97892...
So maybe America is a "sad, sterile" world, but it's also legislated away something that remains a major problem in plaguing the rest of the world.
There's also a huge problem inferring that health inspections and street vendor licensing have anything to do with the results. Mexico is probably no different from Thailand in this regard, and yet there's a 10X difference in years lost. I'll bet there are stronger correlative factors of climate (tropical = more parasites and diseases) and quality of public drinking water. Rich northern countries score better than equatorial countries on these benchmarks too.
It's quite a stretch to say that folks are going to start dying left and right if the health board takes a day off. I'd be perfectly happy to live with the health inspection regime (and the rich food culture) of Mexico, especially if it's combined with our public water and sanitation system.
It could pay for inspections and/or enforcement of employees' food-handler certification, which is sort of a reasonable point, but lemonade is an extremely low-risk food.
If you're going to regulate do it well, but also proportionately.
If you're not going to regulate don't regulate, but provide some education.
There's no point in providing toy registrations.
Last summer I noticed several of the lemonade stands in my neighborhood had bottles of hand sanitizer and that the kids were actually using it. Maybe there is some level of awareness out there.
At least little kids will usually wash their hands because their parents tell them to. High school cheerleaders with no oversight are a different story.