Girl Scout Hailey Heren stands among some of the 10,000 boxes of cookies she expects to sell this year at her home in Stanton, CA, on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Girl Scout Hailey Heren ventures away from her booth and she talks to people and tries to sells cookies at the pier in Huntington Beach, CA, on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Girl Scout Hailey Heren shows off some her cookie-selling patches as she sells cookies at the pier in Huntington Beach, CA, on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Girl Scout Hailey Heren sells cookies at the pier in Huntington Beach, CA, on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Girl Scout Hailey Heren ventures away from her booth and she talks to people and tries to sells cookies at the pier in Huntington Beach, CA, on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Girl Scout Hailey Heren stands among some of the 10,000 boxes of cookies she expects to sell this year at her home in Stanton, CA, on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Girl Scout Hailey Heren ventures away from her booth and she talks to people and tries to sells cookies at the pier in Huntington Beach, CA, on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Girl Scout Hailey Heren ventures away from her booth and she talks to people and tries to sells cookies at the pier in Huntington Beach, CA, on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Girl Scout Hailey Heren sells cookies at the pier in Huntington Beach, CA, on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Girl Scout Hailey Heren ventures away from her booth and she talks to people and tries to sells cookies at the pier in Huntington Beach, CA, on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
As the sun set Friday evening, Girl Scout Hailey Heren, and her father, Glenn, stacked boxes of cookies on a table at the foot of the Huntington Beach Pier preparing to sell the annual sweets.
Hailey Heren, from Troop 3155 in Anaheim, won the high-traffic location in a raffle, but, as she will tell you, “I have come up with a way to sell every cookie. You can give me the least popular cookie and I could go out and sell it almost every time”
Heren has the numbers to back up her confidence. In 2021, she set the Orange County record for single-year sales at 13,093 boxes.
“It’s astronomical,” she said of her record-breaking year. “I’m still in disbelief how I sold it.”
“I did it like I did every year,” she said, but she also credits the pandemic. “So many Girl Scouts were not selling, people weren’t getting cookies, so when they would find a Girl Scout they buy as many as they can.”
This year, her goal is more modest: 6,000 boxes. That would earn her troop about $6,000 and help pay for her portion of a 15-day European trip next year.
Heren doesn’t sit behind her table, in fact, she doesn’t even bring a chair. She spends her time walking around, approaching people, hawking her Girl Scout cookies.
Her father credits her confidence to the cookie sales. He said that while some scouts like to make flashy booths and lots of signs, his daughter prefers to engage in conversation with people.
The family’s home is like a warehouse, with her mother’s office taking the brunt of the product with 10,000 boxes, stacked 7 feet high and sorted by cookie type, arranged with a maze-like path to navigate.
The outgoing teenager is in the Culinary Conservatory at Orange County High School of the Arts. She’s hoping the sales experience will help her later in life, she said. “I want to open my own bakery and become my own boss and that has a lot of selling to it because you have to sell yourself and your product.”
The Girl Scouts cookie season runs through March 12; booth sales were allowed to start over the weekend.
