In the city, operators of pop-up lemonade stands are required to obtain a Temporary Food Service Establishment permit, according to Carolina Rodríguez, a spokeswoman from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. But city officials don’t usually make a big deal of it, she added.

Permit or not, many New Yorkers are using the stands to do good in the community.

Kathy Price, a mother in Brooklyn, and her two young children plan to give their lemonade stand revenue to Stand for Kids, which uses proceeds from stands to support 14 groups working to keep immigrant children with their families.

The “Lemonaid” program at the Robin Hood Foundation, an anti-poverty organization based in Lower Manhattan, encourages its vendors to offer lemonade for free and request donations, as does Alex’s Lemonade Stand, a nonprofit that promotes cancer research.

Dina Bean has run a booth near Central Park with her children, Anabelle and Daniel, in support of Alex’s Lemonade Stand for the last eight summers. Only once have they encountered an angry retailer who threatened to call the city.

“The ironic part is that we probably bring so many people there because people always come to check out what’s going on,” Ms. Bean said. Tensions eased once the Bean family explained that they were fund-raising for a pediatric cancer charity. “We’ve never really had anyone complain except for that one guy, but this year they were super nice.”