SandyMaloneSan Diego, CA – A Girl Scout’s marketing ingenuity almost got her in trouble with the San Diego Girl Scout Council after a pot shop posted a picture of her selling Girl Scout cookies in front of their store.
The girl’s father told KXAN she sold 312 boxes outside Urbn Leaf, a marijuana dispensary, in two 3-hour trips on Wednesday and Friday.
Critics were quick to notify the Girl Scouts after Urbn Leaf founder Will Senn posted a picture of the little girl, bearing a huge stack of cookie boxes and wearing Samoa glasses over her face, on Instagram.
“Get some Girl Scout Cookies with your GSC today until 4pm! Have a friend that wants to #tagalong? Bring them with – shopping is more fun with friends anyways,” Senn posted.
Senn said the scout was just passing by his shop with her parents, pulling a wagon full of cookies.
“Cannabis is now legal in California and a direct result of that is the munchies a lot of times,” he joked to Time.
Initially, the San Diego Girl Scout Council spokeswoman Mary Doyle said they were trying to track down the girl in the picture for further investigation. They believed she might be selling cookies at a commercial location in violation of their rules.
“As Girl Scouts, we assume good intent,” Doyle said. “When we learn that a girl is in violation of a standard/guideline, we almost always discover that the parent was unaware of the rules.”
She said that if the rules were broken again, the Girl Scout could lose her cookie sales awards.
However, it turned out the little girl wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Alison Bushan, of the San Diego Girl Scout Council, said everybody assumed the girl had set up a booth in front of the dispensary, which was against the rules if she hadn’t gotten prior permission from the Girl Scouts to do so.
The Girl Scouts generally permit selling cookies from a booth in front of any business, even dispensaries, KXAN reported.
But this scout was simply selling cookies from her wagon, in an ambulatory nature, as she walked through the community with her parents.
“So that’s what they were doing and they had their car and they were walking around their community there and that is right and well within the rules,” Bushan said.
“From a sales standpoint, she has done all right. But I know that some of my friends have sold 600 boxes just on Sunday walking their neighborhood. So there are many ways that girls are being great entrepreneurs,” Bushan said.