Ambition drives Girl Scout’s cookie sales

Like a lot of Girl Scouts, eighth-grader Phoebe Williams is hoping to increase her year-over-year cookie sales this season. Here’s the thing: She sold 5,155 boxes last year. (And 5,004 the year before.)

“All of my Saturdays and Sundays and after-school days that I wasn’t doing sports or student council I was out selling cookies,” Williams, 13, said.

She also set up a cooking-selling table decorated with signs and streamers, which she carted to various stores — Jewel, Dollar Store, Walgreens — that allowed her to set up shop.

“I’m a very competitive person,” she said. “I always want to do more. I want to sell 200 more this year than last year and see if I can put the money toward a college fund or a local food pantry. Something that gives me and the people around me a chance to experience new things.”

The proceeds from Girl Scout cookie sales are passed on to individual Girl Scout councils and troops, who decide how to spend the money — travel, group activities, donations to a chosen cause.

“Selling cookies teaches me people skills and how to be out there with strangers in a way that’s safe, but also allows me to represent myself and show people who I really am,” Williams said.

She wants to open her own diner when she’s older, where she can put some of those skills to work.

“I want to go to business school first and then get a job, so I can pay my way through culinary school and then go open up my diner,” she said. “I don’t really know where. I just want it to be a place where I have regulars, like people who I really get to know.”