Inside Fitler Square’s Girl Scout Cookie Season

Margaret and Louisa Wurges staff a Girl Scout cookie booth outside South Square Market, where their troop has sold cookies for nine consecutive winters.

On winter weekends, the Girl Scouts outside South Square Market have become a Fitler Square constant: the same folding table, the same bright stacks, and, increasingly, the same faces. Troop 93942 has sold there for nine years, long enough that some of the girls now working the front line began when they were barely tall enough to see over the boxes.

What neighbors see is a familiar transaction. What they do not see is the machinery behind it: a borrowed storefront, pallets that do not fit through the door, and a system that asks kids to learn resilience in public, one “no thanks” at a time.

How 18 Pallets Move Through Center City

This season’s cookies arrived by Mack truck, not minivan. The troop’s inventory is stored inside a vacant coffee shop in the Atlantic, the Broad and Spruce high-rise, where residents temporarily give up parking so the troop can load and unload. When the pallets arrive, parents and scouts move cases by hand and stack them into “cookie towers” that will supply weeks of booths and deliveries.

Keeping track of it all, across booths, personal sales, and online orders, falls to a small group of adult volunteers and a shared master spreadsheet that logs inventory, payments, and credits for dozens of scouts. On busy weekends, the troop’s cookie manager, Matt Thomas, tracks thousands of dollars of transactions.

Even after nine years, the operation is not frictionless. Kate Wurges, one of the troop’s leaders, said the group experienced its first stolen box of cookies this year, an incident she chalked up to confusion rather than malice. “We’re happy for him to have the cookies,” she said.

Selling Where Neighbors Expect You

Wurges said South Square Market is not the troop’s highest-volume booth by the hour, but it remains one of its most important. Other locations move cookies faster, she said, yet South Square Market is where Fitler Square neighbors reliably expect to find the girls, season after season. The troop has chosen to prioritize that familiarity, returning each winter to the same corner and the same customers.

Riya and Eila Ortiz pose behind the cookie table outside South Square Market, part of a long-running neighborhood stop for Girl Scout cookie season.

That relationship is also why cookie season can feel personal on both sides of the table. Residents come looking for a specific troop. Girls learn who the regulars are. The neighborhood, in turn, becomes the place where they practice being brave in public.

Nine Years at the Table

Beatrice Wurges, 13, has been selling cookies for nine years. She started when she was four and remembers almost none of it. What she remembers clearly is how the job changes as you get older.

“Younger Girl Scouts get sales much easier,” she said. “They’re adorable. That’s what people expect.” As that advantage fades, the work becomes more strategic. This year, Beatrice plans to email real estate firms and businesses directly, hoping to secure large orders that mean fewer hours standing outside in the cold.

Her goal, shared with her sisters, is to sell 1,000 boxes each. It is an ambitious number, but one shaped by experience. “You have to look like you’re enjoying it,” she said. “Even when it’s below freezing.”

The Physical Cost of a Sale

Cookie season happens in winter, and for the girls, that means long stretches of standing still in wind tunnels created by city blocks, smiling and calling out to passersby while their fingers go numb.

“It’s really hard to look happy when it’s freezing,” Beatrice said. Riya Ortiz, 12, described the work as tiring but worth it. By the end of a shift, the exhaustion is physical as much as emotional.

Leela Pizer and Lillian Garner stand behind a fully stocked cookie table during a winter weekend shift in Fitler Square.

Learning to endure that discomfort is part of the job. So is learning how to engage anyway, to sing, wave, or strike up conversation when instinct says to stay quiet and warm.

No Pity, Just Cookies

Claire Dorsey, 11, in her fifth cookie season, put it bluntly: the worst customers are the ones who half-engage. People walking past with AirPods who glance at the table and offer a gentle refusal can feel more annoying than silence. “I don’t want people to view me as someone younger who needs to be felt bad about,” she said. “I’m trying to sell here and not take your pity.”

Grace Clement, 11, has been selling cookies for seven years. She said rising prices have forced her to get faster at mental math, and with competitive soccer filling her weekends, she has come to prefer scheduled booth shifts over selling to family and friends individually.

In Fitler Square, cookie season returns every winter with the same folding table and the same bright boxes. What is less visible is how the girls change, learning to stand still in the cold, start conversations with strangers, and grow more confident each season.