Tipsheet

A New Jersey Girl Scout Troop Is Catching Heat for Where It Chose to Sell Cookies

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  March 06, 2026 1:00 PM

A New Jersey Girl Scout troop is the target of complaints after it came up with a way to boost sales of the famous Girl Scout cookies. New Jersey is one of several states where the use of marijuana is legal, so this troop set up a booth outside a cannabis shop to sell cookies to its customers.

Here's more:

Their cookies are baked — and so are their clients!

A New Jersey Girl Scout troop set up their stand outside a cannabis dispensary in New Jersey to cash in on “munchies”-prone potheads — but steaming-mad senior leaders reportedly aren’t sweet on the idea.

The enterprising troop teamed up with with Daylite Dispensary in Mount Laurel to sell the treats near the shop’s exit after regional leaders rejected the idea last year, NJ.com reported. 

“You use cannabis, you get the munchies,” Daylite Dispensary owner Steve Cassidy told the outlet Wednesday. “There’s a connection between snacks and cannabis and the fact that we don’t have to pretend that doesn’t exist anymore is really awesome.”

...

But after Cassidy made headlines yesterday, he said the troop may have landed in hot water with higher ups.

“It was about community,” Cassidy told The Independent. “If that means the local Girl Scout troop got in trouble, that is absolutely not what we wanted.” He declined to comment further.

The cookie sale is the largest fundraiser for troops and local councils, with 100% of the net revenue remaining with local councils and troops to fund activities, community projects, and camping trips.

A lot of people saw no problem with the clever marketing campaign.

We'd be curious to know how many sales this New Jersey troop made, because this isn't the first time a Girl Scout has found a captive customer base.

In 2014, San Francisco Girl Scout Danielle Lay set up her cookie table outside a dispensary in the city and sold 117 boxes in less than two hours. In 2018, a San Diego Girl Scout sold 300 boxes in six hours outside of a dispensary. Chicago-area Girl Scouts did the same in 2020, selling hundreds of boxes outside of a dispensary.

This is a perfectly valid reaction to this story, too. You don't have to like or support cannabis to recognize this is smart selling.

Given the past stories, which didn't seem to generate much outrage, it's odd this New Jersey troop might be in trouble.

Someone is likely mad they didn't think of this sales strategy first, and that's why they complained.

For those who object on moral grounds, the idea of Girl Scouts selling cookies outside a cannabis dispensary may feel uncomfortable. That's a reasonable reaction, of course. But this isn’t exactly uncharted territory. Similar stories have popped up for years — from San Francisco to San Diego to Chicago — where enterprising scouts discovered that customers leaving dispensaries often enthusiastically become cookie buyers. Whether one finds the optics questionable or simply sees it as clever entrepreneurship in a state where marijuana is legal, the reality is that these girls are doing what Girl Scouts have always done: learning business skills, raising money for their troop, and selling a product Americans from all walks of life can't resist.