It takes a lot of guts to walk into a school as big as North Penn wearing a Girl Scout vest plastered in badges. Tori Mitchell admits that she doesn’t really notice the looks and stares from her peers.
“Well if I do, I’m not aware of them. It’s kind of like crazy hat day when I wear that funky hat and I don’t really notice the stares. Sometimes I get the distinction of what the heck is she wearing?”
You don’t expect to see your average high school senior in a Girl Scout vest selling cookies,.
“That’s why we as older girl scouts get a lot of beef. Normally you don’t expect a teenager to sell you Girl Scout cookies. You expect a cute little adorable girl who you can’t say no to. With us, it’s more difficult because we have to use our persuasion to get them to buy cookies,” Mitchell explained.
Mitchell joined Girl Scouts in 2000, and it was for more than just selling cookies.
“My family has traditions where it’s like you make the pot roast, your daughter makes the pot roast, and your daughter’s daughter makes the pot roast and for my family we do Girl scouts. My cousins did Girl Scouts; my mother did Girl Scouts, my grandmother thought about doing Girl Scouts, so I had to do Girl Scouts.”
Mitchell also made it very clear that Girl Scouts was not just for selling cookies. “Our big event is selling cookies, but it’s mainly for the community. Even selling cookies, a large amount of our profit goes to the girl scouts of eastern Pennsylvania. So it helps Girl Scout troops in Philly keep up with what they’re doing- like it allows them to have school supplies. We supply them and get them going, and keep that Girl Scout fire alive. And like if we’re having a fast season, we would buy cookies and donate them to the homeless shelter.”
Fast forward to fourteen years later, Mitchell is not a five year old but eighteen years old, and convincing buyers to buy Girl Scout cookies is not all that easy anymore. Mitchell revealed the struggles and hardships but also the amount of success in selling cookies in school.
“So in my new troop they opened the idea of selling cookies in school. So I think in 7th grade is when I started. Two years ago, the older girls in [my] troop were selling cookies and they got in trouble so we kind of smuggled them. And now we just sell them openly. Selling cookies in school was a success. Everybody loves Girl Scout cookies, who doesn’t? I mean there are a lot of people who love to buy Girl Scout cookies, to look at them and their flavors and new developments” says Mitchell.
Mitchell also revealed some tricks into getting buyers to buy more cookies. “We were in that awkward phase of our growth and development; our girl scout leader had to instruct us to put your hair in a ponytail or pigtails- make sure you wear your junior vest so it’ll just look like you’re a big junior, no makeup what so ever.”
Mitchell also cued in some of her most memorable moments as a Girl Scouts from selling the most cookies to selling cookies in the icy cold weather.
“The record I’ve sold is 260 boxes. The last time I sold cookies at a cookie booth, I was outside of Vinny’s and it was below freezing weather. They wouldn’t let me inside, I was in the wind tunnel, and I was there the whole time. People were giving me donations, because you can give donations for Girl Scout cookies for the soldiers overseas, and they were just giving me donations just because I was out there freezing my tokhes off.”
Girl Scouts also expanded their business with the help of a Girl Scout cookie finder app. You can now find cookies near you by zip code or by city.