I Asked Girl Scout Cookie Top Sellers What It Really Takes To Hawk 6000+ Boxes — & Wow

It's Girl Scout cookie time, which means my daughter is attempting to sell 6,000 cookies. She set this goal after spotting an iPad and a trip to Washington, D.C., in the prize catalog. I gently tried to explain to her that we do not have space in our house for 6,000 cookies, and probably no one else does either.

Then I wondered, "Are there families that acquire a storage unit or a U-Haul so they can actually sell 6,000 cookies?"

Let me tell you: Apparently, these people do exist, and it only took a quick Google search to find them. I decided to call the moms of these super sellers to learn the secrets behind their epic sales.

I started at the top, literally, with Katie Francis. She set a world record by selling 180,000 boxes in the span of 10 years.

Katie's quest for cookie glory gained momentum after she became the top seller in Oklahoma with 7,482 boxes in 2012. Excited by the state-level win, she reached out to Elizabeth (Liz) Brinton, who held the international record at the time. Brinton had sold more than 100,000 boxes in the 1980s, back when scouts had to use a pen and paper and talk to people instead of using the social media broadcasts that we rely on today.

"Liz told her to think outside the box: think of different ways to sell cookies," says DeLee Francis, Katie's mom and troop leader.

After school and on weekends, Katie spent countless hours visiting businesses and selling on street corners. Many people were eager to support the local girl's attempt to claim a world record.

"She would do a pass-through at an office building or a pass through an area of town," says Francis. "You kind of go where the people are. That was the main tactic."

This seems simple, but Katie and her mom had worked out complex methods for canvassing her hometown of Oklahoma City. They used an Excel spreadsheet to track each location, peak hours for crowds, and even drive times.

The logistics of transporting and storing cookies needed to be planned as well. For years, Katie's family kept the boxes at home. One year, they had about 14,000 cookies in their garage, and at that point, they decided to rent a storage unit.

While the storage unit may seem extreme, it's not so wild in the world of Girl Scout cookies. In fact, many "cookie moms" who manage troop sales rent U-Hauls to pick up the thousands of cookies their troop will sell.

Cathy Caltabiano is one of those cookie moms, and her daughter sold more than 1,000 cookies for the first time in 2020. During COVID, her daughter couldn't rely on the cookie booths to sell cookies, so she started doing door drop-offs.

"We got super creative with ways to sell to people," Calabiano says.

Since she was stuck at home, Calabiano's daughter worked with her dad to invent pie recipes that incorporated the cookies. They then shared the recipes on social media to encourage more purchases.

Calabiano pointed out that most girls can only sell a couple hundred boxes to family and friends before they are maxed out. From there, the girls need to rely on booth sales or other strategies. This is time-consuming for both parents and kids, though. Here's the honest truth: If your scout wants to sell thousands of cookies, you basically need to be all-in, too.

Heather Bushey is a troop leader and Girl Scout service manager in Connecticut, and she says that top sellers tend to be the daughters of troop leaders or cookie moms.

When Bushey first enrolled her kids into the program, she wasn't involved in the cookie mania, but that changed when another girl told her daughter that she wasn't capable of selling 1000 boxes.

"She took that as a very personal challenge," Bushey says. "She literally would say to me after school or on weekends, 'Can we drive around and sell cookies,' and we'd drive around with the whole [minivan] filled with cookies."

Bushey's highly motivated scout struck deals with businesses to boost her sales. In fact, she convinced a car dealership to purchase more than 200 boxes to give to their car buyers. A box of Thin Mints to take home with your brand-new SUV? Yes, please!

After talking with these super sellers, I reminded my daughter of her lofty goal. We recorded a sales video for our family and friends. It took her about 20 minutes to get the perfect clip. Then, it took me two hours to edit it in CapCut. I was starting to feel invested.

Next, we borrowed the recipe idea and created a cooking video showing Thin Mint Cream Pies. Unfortunately, I am more of a writer than a chef. After a few failed attempts at making homemade mint cream, we decided to just smush ice cream and thin mints into pre-made pie crusts. Luckily, I was able to make a pretty convincing video anyway using my new CapCut skills.

Then, we received terrible news — it was time to turn in the initial cookie orders, and my daughter was 5,925 boxes short of her goal. We still have the booth-selling season, so we haven't given up yet, but there's one big lesson in all of this: It's never too early to start planning for cookie season.