These are no ordinary cookies. La Guringuita owner Caroline McGinley has made them extra thick, packed with molten Ghirardelli dark chocolate goodness, and at a quarter-pound, they are capable of placating any sweet tooth. If not, get two!
Her cookies are famous at the West Palm Beach GreenMarket. But her entrepreneurship story did not start there. During college, Caroline McGinley, a young woman from Jupiter, Florida, studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain. She enjoyed socializing with Spaniards, whose daily lives often revolve around communal plazas, lively cafes, and extended-family gatherings.
Learning the language and acquiring a taste for Spanish food and its vibrant and diverse culture came quite easily, she found. She also learned to appreciate Spain’s historically rich blend of Mediterranean and European influences. Sevilla, in Southern Spain, is characterized by passionate artistic expression and an unhurried pace of life, which suited the 23-year-old just fine.
It wasn’t surprising to her friends and family that, after graduating from college in 2018, McGinley decided to travel to Uruguay in South America to work as an English teacher.
What happened next reads like a Netflix episodic series. In my conversation with her, we talked about my hometown, Madrid, and my extended family’s house in Valencia near the Mediterranean, and of course, about those delicious cookies and how she got her nickname, La Gringuita, “the Little American girl,” in Montevideo, Uruguay, in South America.
MC: Out of all the places in the world, what made you decide to go to Uruguay?
CM: Yes, totally random. I’ve always loved to travel. I studied abroad in Spain for a full year. Anyone who's in college needs to study abroad. It’s so much fun. I lived with a family, so it was a cool, immersive experience.
MC: My father’s side of the family is from Cordoba and Valencia, which are also on the Southern coast, and a four-hour train ride to Sevilla.
CM: Yes! I did get to do a little weekend trip to Valencia, and it was super cool. Spain is such a diverse, culturally rich country, and it's different in each region.
MC: Well, Seville is rich in historic Moorish architecture, which I love, and deeply rooted in a traditional Andalusian vibe. Valencia is a more modern, coastal city. Their beaches are the quintessential Mediterranean—full of charm and golden sands. The best!
CM: That’s the best experience I had during my sophomore year. During the summer between my junior and senior years, I found a work-exchange job at a hotel in northern Spain. This was not a program; I was there completely on my own. I got very proficient in Spanish. I knew I wanted to be in a Spanish-speaking country after graduation, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, so I decided to teach English as a second language, and I ended up loving it.
I wanted to go to South America next because I had never been anywhere on the continent. I got a one- way ticket, and I landed in Montevideo, the capital and Uruguay’s largest city. It is a hustling, bustling city and the heart of commerce.
MC: Fearless.
CM: Crazy! I think about it now. I was 23 and didn't even have cell service when I got there. I found a place to live on Craigslist, where students or young professionals who move from city to city around the world can find a place—a long-term hostel.
MC: Quite an experience at such a young age. You should write a book about it.
CM: For sure! I was the only English speaker and the only American, so everybody else was either from Uruguay, Cuba, or Venezuela. I picked up the Uruguayan accent quickly. I worked hard to make a home there. Uruguay has an artistic and intellectual culture. I just felt like I was part of something special coming from the US, where it can be materialistic in many places. There, everybody follows their passion.
MC: And how did you find yours?
CM: Baking has always been something that I've been good at and enjoyed doing. At our residence in Montevideo, everybody else cooked and shared their meals with me. So, my mom encouraged me to bake something for them. I didn’t have a recipe to follow or a measuring cup or spoons, just some bowls and soup spoons. So, one day I made cookies using a childhood recipe from memory. Baking is a science, but I started adding new things, getting a little creative here and there.
MC: Did it ever cross your mind that you would be selling these cookies?
CM: Oh, gosh, no! I was coming up with my own concoctions, but never thought that I would sell anything. You need to be so confident. I was never exposed to entrepreneurship. That was a foreign concept for me. A lot of people in Montevideo have small side businesses, and I knew others who would sell things on the side.
When I gave my roommates the cookies, they said, “These are so good! You should sell them.” And that’s how the seeds were planted. One of my roommates from Venezuela, who also baked, motivated me to go to an indoor farmer's market and sell our baked goods. I wasn't selling just cookies; I had a whole bunch of desserts, and people liked them a lot. Suddenly, a light bulb went off.
I started an Instagram page to post photos of the things I was baking. It was slow at first. My first big sale was a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I started coming up with my own recipes and spending a ton of time in the kitchen, very obsessed with baking.
They don’t have a Costco-type membership, but there’s a section in the city with wholesale stores, and you don’t need a membership. I got on a bus to buy large quantities of ingredients, then took it back to my apartment. At first, I delivered the cookies myself. I would hop on a bus with boxes of cookies and then drop them in people's apartments. At some point, I stopped doing that and had my customers come to my place to pick up the cookies!
MC: You were working full-time, so when did you have time to prepare the dough and bake the cookies?
CM: Funny you ask that! I was making the cookie dough on the weekends and freezing the dough balls. And then, on the weekdays, that’s when I was open for business. I would come home from teaching people, pop the cookie dough in the oven, and have them nice and hot in their boxes, ready to be picked up.
MC: When and why did you move back to the States when you were doing so well in Montevideo?
CM: I sold the cookies for about a year. I was doing great. I had over 1,000 followers on Instagram and was selling cookies every day. And then, the news of COVID hit. Everything was closed, and my parents wanted me home. The borders closed indefinitely the day after I came back home.
MC: You left just in time.
CM: Yeah, just in time. And it's so interesting, like, what my life would have been like if I hadn’t. But yeah… I came back in March 2020 and bought my LLC license two months later. I did the same thing, posting pictures on Instagram. Nothing was open, not even farmers’ markets. Everybody was in quarantine... cooking and baking!
MC: As were you!
CM: Oh, yeah! I was making more and more recipes, and I loaded my parents’ freezer with dough balls. Before I started selling, I put one dough ball in a Ziploc bag with Sharpie directions on it, and I gave it to one of my best friends to bake at home. So, she was actually the first person to bake one of my cookies and eat it without me being there to guide them through the process. I was nervous that people would mess them up, like the baking time, etc.
MC: And what did she say?
CM: [laughing] She called me up, and she was like, “Caroline, my drama is like, I'm at home watching a movie, and I have this hot-out-of-the-oven cookie. Like, my whole house smells like cookies!” It was then that I realized that I wasn't just selling a cookie; it was the experience.
I wanted to sell my cookies to supermarkets, and that thought completely changed everything. I knew nothing about selling to grocery stores or how hard it would be, which is probably a good thing, because I don't think I would have done it. It’s not easy.
MC: How did you reach out to Whole Foods?
CM: I Googled it! I found out that Whole Foods buys from small suppliers, and I could start by selling to just one Whole Foods. First, I needed a commercial license and to be in a commercial space. I Googled that too and found out that I could rent space in somebody's kitchen. I didn’t have any money or savings, so by August of 2020, I got into a commercial kitchen in West Palm Beach. It was around the time that I got into Swank Farmers Market.
MC: Very familiar with them. I think they were the only ones who were open to starting early and accepting vendors. How did you end up at the WPB GreenMarket, the number-one farmers’ market in the USA?
CM: Well, I didn’t get in on the first try in 2022.
MC: Yes, it is very competitive, with a Shark Tank-style audition. They want to know that you can handle it.
CM: Yeah! In 2023, when I finally made it in, I remember the audition. There was only one male judge, and I specifically remember he looked up and said, "What makes you think you can handle this market?” And I said, "What makes you think I can't?”
MC: What?
CM: Thank you. Everybody had that same reaction. They were like, "Oh…" but there was, you know, there was absolutely no reason why he should have asked that. I had also started selling to smaller stores, like gourmet markets in the area, and I think that helped.
MC: So, what’s next for La Gringuita? And you know, who gave you that nickname, and why did you choose it for your brand?
CM: My roommates in Uruguay named me that! It was good, and it stuck.
So, La Gringuita Cookies is in Whole Foods in South Florida. We've also expanded to the whole state of Florida, in 100 stores.
I’ve got several people in the kitchen, and I’m learning to delegate, which was a big lesson of 2025. I've done this year 2026 a lot better than I did previously. It’s impossible to make the cookies and try to sell them at the same time.
MC: Well, it was 100% necessary in the beginning, but now it’s different.
CM: Exactly. I think things are finally clicking into place.
MC: Aside from Whole Foods, Florida and the WPB Green Market, where can people buy La Gruinguita Cookies?
CM: At my website, La Gringuita Cookies. We ship nationally, and then we sell in the Midwest. Click on the store locator, and you never know what you’ll see next!