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Local Girl Scouts Hope Super Bowl And Phoenix Open Tourism Will Boost Cookie Sales

Girl Scout troop 1593 in Phoenix walk the streets near Super Bowl Central hoping to drum up a few cookie sales.
(Photo by Carrie Jung - KJZZ)
Girl Scout troop 1593 in Phoenix walk the streets near Super Bowl Central hoping to drum up a few cookie sales.

With events like the Super Bowl and the Phoenix Open bringing thousands of extra tourists to the Valley this weekend, many local businesses are hoping the extra traffic will mean a boost in sales. But some nonprofits like the local Girl Scout council are also hoping to capitalize on the hype.

On the corner of Jefferson and First Street in downtown Phoenix, Girl Scout troop 1593 are working a crowd of people heading toward Super Bowl Central hoping to close a few cookie sales.

"Let me see, you guys sold me, I’m going to take $10 worth," said Taylor McCarthy, a Patriots fan who traveled from Boston to attend the Super Bowl this weekend.

This is the first day these girls are working the Super Bowl crowd. And while they only spent a few minutes in the area, troop leader Janet Miller estimates they sold about two dozen boxes in that time.

More troops will be out tomorrow, with cookie booths planned for Super Bowl Central and a space near the entrance of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.

"From the beginning, as soon as we knew that it was happening, there was this whole sense of how can we take advantage of this for cookies? How can we capitalize on all of the people coming to town," said Heather Thornton, a spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts Cactus Pine council, the group that oversees troops in the Phoenix area.

"They’ve been strategizing and working really creatively with different businesses that can catch traffic as they’re going in and out as they’re going to their hotel and what not," she explained.

While the Cactus Pine crew is still "learning by doing" their way through this Super Bowl weekend, the Girl Scouts council of tropical Florida has planned cookie sales around several of the events. Eva Prada, the council’s product sales director, said when the Super Bowl has been in Miami, troops see a significant jump in sales.

"Especially the last time, I believe it was in 2010 that we had a significant jump of about 30 percent of our sale overall, so it does make a big difference," said Prada. 

But Prada said it’s more than just a general increase in available customers.

"The tourism traffic is different," she explained. "The super bowl just brings more of them, and one of the things that we find with tourism is people are on vacation. They’re heading to do something fun so they’re not as budget conscious."

Back at Cactus Pine headquarters, spokeswoman Heather Thornton said the girls are dreaming big in terms of sales goals for this weekend, with hopes of breaking a Guinness world record on their to-do list.

"We have to sell at least $75,000 worth of cookies," Thornton said. "We’re going for $100,000, so that would be 25,000 boxes in 24 hours."

Thornton said with all the extra tourists in town, reaching that goal is within the realm of possibility, but she adds if they don’t, well, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

 

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Carrie Jung was a senior field correspondent from 2014 to 2018.