Oklahoma Girl Scout sets cookie sales record at over 18,000 boxes

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - A nearly 30-year-old record for Girl Scout cookie sales has been crumbled by Oklahoma City scout Katie Francis, who has so far sold 18,107 boxes by asking anyone who crossed her path to buy some of the sweets. "There's three ingredients to selling cookies: There's lots of time, lots of commitment, and I have to ask everybody that I see," the 11-year-old said in an interview with the NewsOK website posted on Monday. It took the sixth-grade student just seven weeks to top the previous record of 18,000 boxes in annual sales, which was set in a year in the mid-1980s by scout Elizabeth Brinton. Francis, looking to sell at least 20,000 boxes by the end of March, said she will break into song and dance if it will help her sales pitch. "For the last two years, I beat the state record and it just seemed like the national record was next on the list," she told TV broadcaster KOCO According to the Girl Scouts, the sale of cookies as a way to finance troop activities began in Oklahoma nearly a century ago when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee baked cookies and sold them as a service project. Francis said her favorite type of cookies are the Samoas. (Reporting by Heide Brandes; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Ken Wills)