Police received three different calls from a group of residents in an Iowa neighborhood over five days last week because a ten-year-old girl was selling cookies on her street corner to buy clothes for school.
Savannah Watters, of Cedar Falls, baked some cookies with her mother and held a bake sale on her street when the neighbors placed three separate calls on July 27, 30, and 31, to complain about the traffic her bake sale brought to the neighborhood.
“No one had talked to me about anything, they just took it upon themselves and called 911. The police show up to talk to my daughter,” Savannah’s mother Kara Watters told the Courier.
Savannah’s cookie business took off since it launched five weeks ago. Every day since then, she filled a cooler with her baked goods and perched on a street corner for hours to sell the treats to those passing by.
But some neighbors took issue with Savannah’s business, arguing that the traffic brought into the neighborhood endangered the safety of young children.
“Well we’ve had a little girl that’s been selling cookies and water for four weeks and the traffic is getting to the point that they’re using our driveway to turn around … which is fine … but they almost hit my daughter. I mean it’s just getting … it’s getting out of control,” one neighbor reportedly told police over the phone, according to WHO-TV.
Even though authorities told Savannah to take her business away from the street corner, the budding entrepreneur decided to take her business to her driveway and is taking orders from customers she gave out business cards to over the past few weeks.
“She’s trying to figure out how she can keep it going. She just wants her customers to know,” Kara Watters said.