Public and private efforts are helping address the root causes of teens selling water
Teen boys are trickling into Glaciers Italian Ice in southwest Atlanta, but they’re not coming to buy the cold, sweet treat — they’re helping sell it. B.J. Sexton, Kingston Montague and Christopher Brown, rising freshmen and sophomores in high school, are learning the ropes of retailing — from counting inventory to planning for upcoming outdoor events. Sexton, 15, used to be a “water boy,” hawking drinks on the street when he was around 12 years old because “it was a quick, easy way to get money.”
But it was dangerous, too. And the perils of selling drinks on the high-traffic streets of Atlanta — both for the kids and the public — came to a head in the summer of 2020, when disputes got more violent, a driver was shot and 18-year-old Jalanni Pless was killed over $10.
“These young men are going out here, trying to bring in some money,” Fulton County Commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman, whose district includes Glaciers Italian Ice, said during a visit to the space. “Can you imagine working an intersection, and what you make may keep the lights on, what you make may allow us to have dinner for three or four days.”
Now, three years after the initial furor over the water sellers spurred public and private efforts to help the kids thrust into this position, initiatives are in place to help them make money in a safe, more productive way.
From water to ice
Ian Elmore-Moore is the owner and executive director of Glaciers. Originally from New Jersey, he said kids he grew up with sold the frozen treat from pushcarts in parks. “When I saw what was happening with the Atlanta water boys, I said, ‘Man, this could be a model that could be successful out here,’” Elmore-Moore said. “If I can employ young people that work these pushcarts … we not only can keep them safe, but we can provide mentoring, tutoring, skills, as well as employment.”
In 2021, he got a cart with three fellow Morehouse College* alumni and set up at the intersection of Alison Court and Delowe Drive in southwest Atlanta. Kids started gravitating toward him and he began mentoring them. He eventually set up a shop near the Dixie Hills neighborhood on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and developed a two-year entrepreneurship program for the kids. During the first eight weeks of their first year, from February to April, teens work on character and leadership development. Then around spring break, they begin selling for the first time and throughout the summer have a full-time paid internship where they make $10 to $12.50 an hour.
During the second year of the program, the kids learn management and become an owner-operator of the cart. Elmore-Moore takes them to wholesalers and teaches them how to maintain inventory, develop work schedules and how to manage expenses. In total, there are about 20 kids in the program now. Brown, 14, hopes that being part of the program will let him “get enough money to just buy my stuff and my momma don’t have to buy it for me.”
Glaciers serves up more than a dozen flavors, all named after Atlanta neighborhoods, including Adamsville Apple, Bankhead Blueberry, Poncey Pineapple and West End Watermelon. Elmore-Moore’s first cohort of four teens started in 2022 and sold the Italian ice at events hosted by Mayor Andre Dickens’ office and Georgia Tech. They soon branched out to the Beltline, Ponce City Market and local golf courses. For many of the kids, it was their first time in these spaces.
“That’s when it dawned on me about exposure. I knew I was going to mentor them in order for them to to work for us and I knew they were going to get paid, but what I didn’t know is that the cart was going to provide a level of exposure for them,” Elmore-Moore said. “It opens doors that otherwise kind of felt closed.” The Glaciers program also revealed other social issues. Elmore-Moore said he soon realized some of the kids couldn’t read the menu. He had to color code it.
But it also led Elmore-Moore to launch a school tutoring program. Now, students from the Atlanta University Center come to Glaciers after school to tutor the kids, teach them how to play chess and bring after-school speakers. “[Peachtree] Peach is the best flavor,” Sexton said. Montague and Brown disagreed. They are partial to Lenox Lemon and Midtown Mango.