16 Best Seasonal Small Business Ideas for the Summer

Top Summer Small Business Ideas to Start

If you are looking for the best seasonal small business ideas for summer to make extra cash. Even extending their current small business into other areas should review the best seasonal ideas listed below. See how you can scale up your business options during the hot summer months.

Here are the Best Seasonal Small Business Ideas for the Summer

1. Tourist Photographer

Starting up a mobile tourist photographer business is an easy but time-consuming small business idea for summer. You only need a reasonable quality digital camera. Then you can offer your services at various tourist hotspots and attractions throughout your local area.

Most couples or families would love to take photographs of everyone together while on holiday. Often feel too awkward to ask people, as results turn out poorly. You do not simply need to walk up and offer your services to any couple or family.

Ensure you’re offering services at tourist attraction sites and avoid randomly walking up to strangers on the street. Avoid taking photos without people’s permission.

Photos can be provided digitally, or if you have a small mobile photo printer, that may even be a great option, but most people prefer digital images today anyway. If you can print off business cards to give to people to appear more professional, that would be helpful, and make sure you have an easy way to pay, such as Zellepay, Venmo, Paypal, or a combination of payment methods.

If you live in a touristy city and looking to explore all corners of the city with historic sites. This is probably the best seasonal small business idea for summer to start for a student in university or anyone looking to make extra cash on the side. With huge improvements in the quality of most digital cameras, these days – this side hustle is very easy and cheap to start.

2. Jet Ski Rentals

Jet Ski Rentals are one of the best small business ideas for summer. They’re incredibly profitable, and people expect to pay higher prices for short periods of fun on a lake or quiet beach area. It’s also possible to scale up your jet ski rentals based on your income and available time.

Essentials, before you let anybody on your jet ski(s), are liability insurance that covers third parties and a waiver form that everybody must sign before touching your jet ski.

Set yourself up on a lake or nearby water that tourists frequent. Create a sign or some way for people to know you’re offering rentals, and your only issue should be having enough jet skis to supply the demand.

3. Pool Maintenance

Summer is when people want to use their pools, but keeping them clean is a hassle. Many people don’t like spending the time to do it. If you’re in an area with many pools, then pool maintenance is one of your best small business ideas for summer.

You can offer your services directly to people or put flyers in their letterboxes offering reasonably priced pool services that undercut the bigger players in the market. If you can find a good number of pools to clean in the same general area, then it makes the job a lot easier. Get them all done over a couple of days without losing your entire week.

Pool maintenance can be a weekly or monthly option for people. Your level of service can range from simply cleaning out leaves and scrubbing the pool. If you have the experience, you can perform complete pool maintenance and water level checks.

Every pool owner will have their own equipment, so you won’t need to bring or supply anything aside from yourself and manual labor, so it’s a low startup cost business idea.

4. Local Farmers Market Host or Seller

Local farmer’s markets are a great small business idea for summer. You can rent out space on your property if you’re in an excellent location to sellers or get a permit for a public area. You only need to advertise and bring in enough sellers to make your farmer’s market an excellent destination for locals and tourists.

If you can make anything or have access to locally sourced products such as honey, jams, crafts, fresh fruit from orchards, or anything else common at farmer’s markets, you can set up a stall and start selling.

As a seller, you’ll need to provide a table and possibly a tent to keep yourself and your products from overheating. Payment options are generally cash at farmer’s markets which makes payment easy but ensures you have changed.

5. Food Truck

As a restaurant, you may want to set up a food truck as one of your small business ideas for summer, it can extend your reach and profits further. It’s a way for people to sample your food and redirect them back to your restaurant later.

Setting up a full food truck can be expensive, but there are options to rent or even buy used food trucks already set up.

As a seasonal option, you can even set up a food cart without being a restaurant or chef. Rent or buy a cart to store and keep food hot (or cold). Start selling in tourist spots with cheap food purchased from Costco or other locations for higher prices.

Things like hotdogs are simple to store, heat, and sell to tourists who don’t want to leave the beach or where there isn’t food nearby.

6. “Golf Course Lawns” Lawn Care Mowing in Summer

Golf course lawns get mowed 5-6 days a week, so there is plenty of work to be done. Especially during busy summer months when the courses are busy, and you need to mow early or late in the day. Groundskeepers may hire independent mowers that are willing to work early or late when the golf course is closed.

The golf course would provide all equipment, and the work is steady but can’t really scale, especially depending on how many golf courses are in your local area.

7. Boat or RV Detailing Service

Everybody wants their boat or RV to be clean and look good but doesn’t want to spend their free time doing the actual cleaning. You can offer your services at local RV parks, or set yourself up at local boat ramps. In addition, check in with boat owners directly or with flyers at local marinas.

When traveling to RV parks, ensure they’re not local or permanent RV parks. Ensure the boat ramp set up should be in the parking lot or out of the way but viewable for anybody that is pulling their boat out of the water.

At a minimum, you’ll want to invest in a water blaster, which should only set you back about $100-$200 at Home Depot or purchased second-hand off Craigslist.

This should be one of your go-to business ideas for summer if you’re in a high tourist area with many RVs or have a lot of expensive boats in a marina that you can clean.

8. Interior Home Painting

Interior home painting is one of the best seasonal small business ideas for summer. Many people are looking to freshen up their living spaces. You can provide the manual labour to get their rooms painted with minimal costs to you.

Advertise yourself on Craigslist or other job posting sites. Also, buy minimal supplies such as rollers and trays, painter’s tape, and some tarps to keep things clean, along with a few brushes, and you’re ready to get painting.

The skill requirements for general interior home painting are low, especially if you’re offering student or low-cost painting services using white paints with low gloss.

As your experience increases, you can even offer additional services or scale up with painting partners or helpers.

9. Pop-up Lemonade or Ice Cream Stand

Pop-up lemonade, ice cream, or other food stands in tourist hot spots, or vacation spots is one of the easier and more profitable small business ideas for summer.

You can buy supplies from places like Costco or Walmart and resell them at beaches, lakes, or anywhere where people are relaxing and don’t want to leave to get food.

You can even get a mobile cart or cooler to travel around the local area so that people don’t even have to get up. Most people will be excited to buy a cold drink or ice cream on a hot day, and profits can be extremely high in bigger areas.

10. Kids Tech Boot Camp

Parents looking to give their kids the edge in the new school year or set them up for a tech career are always looking for opportunities. A kid’s tech boot camp will be one of your better small business ideas for summer while kids are off school.

If you have programming or other tech skills that you can teach to kids. Then create in-person or online tech boot camps for multiple kids to maximize your profits. However, you’ll either want to keep class sizes down for a more personalized experience or offer extremely cheap rates if you have large class sizes.

You can advertise online or offer services through schools if they allow it. You should start advertising early in the school year so that your class sizes are maximized for what you want during the summer.

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11. Local Car Wash

Local car wash options can be expensive or provide sub-standard results when they’re automated. So providing hand car washing services in your local area is the best small business idea for summer students or anybody looking for some extra cash.

You only need a space to set up and access to water, then you can buy some car wash liquid and soft clothes to wash cars. You may also want to purchase a water blaster to get all the significant dirt off to make the washing faster. The investment is low for all other supplies.

12. House Painting

House painting can be a profitable side hustle or one of the best small business ideas for summer if you have a lot of free time and experience with painting. However, unlike interior painting, you will need a little extra skill and care when doing house painting. To ensure you’re using or given the right kind of paint for each area.

Many homeowners are looking for cheaper options through sites like Craigslist because professional house painting services are often expensive or too busy during summer. This reflects that it’s a profitable and busy small business to get into.

You’ll need minimal equipment, and if you have a helper or friend to paint with you, it can be a quick and enjoyable experience.

13. “Pick up a picnic” – Order a picnic to go

Offering “Pick up a picnic” services can be one of the better small business ideas for summer if you’ve got access to hotels or restaurants that have an existing client base. Otherwise, you could need to build a website, and it becomes more than a summer job.

By offering this service through hotels to guests or restaurant patrons. There is a fee to other businesses but get access to their client base to provide picnic hampers for summer adventures.

The food required could be mostly prepurchased. This would cut down prep time besides combining everything into an appealing basket to be picked up from you, a hotel, or a restaurant.

14. Sports Equipment Rental

Sports equipment rental is a great way to make some extra money with one of the easiest small business ideas for summer. Buy some cheap sports equipment from Walmart or Amazon, and set up shop at a local beach.

You can offer the 10 Best Virtual Assistant Side Hustles Websites (Including in Canada) rental of basketballs, footballs, and volleyballs, and even provide fun sports equipment for the whole family with things like croquet.

If you’re spending the day at the beach anyway, why not make money extra cash with a seasonal business while spending quality with your friends?

15. House and Pet sitting

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Summer is the time that many families or professionals go on holiday and need a place to keep their pets, often wanting to keep them at home where they can be comfortable and happy.

This is one of the more interesting small business ideas for summer because it provides a great place to stay in a location where you may want to vacation yourself. Your only requirements would be to ensure the safety and security of the house and pet.

Depending on the pet you may even be able to take them out on your own activities to the beach or local parks.

The pay is usually good and you can save money on hotels and your own rent if you turn this into a job for the entire summer. You can scale up slightly by offering house and pet sitting throughout the whole year, as you can travel and work or attend classes from your laptop.

If you’re looking for the best seasonal small business ideas for summer this is probably the easiest and has the lowest setup cost to start.

16. Lawn Care Services

Lawn care is one of the best seasonal small business ideas for summer that can massively scale up depending on how much time you have and if you want to keep the work going past summer.

You can provide your own equipment with mowers and other lawn care and gardening supplies, or most homeowners will have everything required available for your use.

Flyers and directly asking homeowners in nice areas of your town are going to get you the best results, and if you do a good job then you can keep your costumes on each summer or throughout the year.

In Summary to Best Seasonal Small Business Ideas for Summer

Anybody looking for the best seasonal small business ideas for summer to make extra cash summertime usually has hot days, sunshine, and plenty of outdoor activities.

This season can become an excellent opportunity for establishing an outdoor and seasonal small business. If you want additional income and a job you can find a summer career that offers an excellent opportunity for you to start. Consumers seek small businesses that are offering products during the summer, from pool cleaning to outdoor adventure activities and refreshing drinks.