When the doorbell rings over the next few weeks, brace yourself for the sweetest sales pitch of the year.
Girl Scout cookie season kicked off Friday, and the pig-tailed troops are infiltrating every spot that’s accessible by foot, bike or mini-van.
Beware. They’re as crafty as they are cute.
Troop leaders have realized it takes more than freckles and a gap-toothed smile to keep the annual tradition rolling. Thousands of scouts have trained in cookie-selling boot camps, learning about money management, basic accounting and perhaps most important, how to handle the tough customer.
“What do you say if somebody says they’re on a diet?” asked Sandy Springs, Ga., troop chief Christina Stein, who led one seminar.
Nine hands shot up. “We say we have new low-fat lemon coolers for you …” her daughter, 9-year-old Madeline Stein, blurted out, “and you can get the other cookies for your kids and your husband.”
Good. Very good.
Too many sweets in the pantry, you say?
“Buy some and we’ll donate them to the Atlanta Food Bank for you,” countered Caroline McLochlin, 9.
Now that’s marketing, kid.
If the session was any indication, these little selling machines won’t take no for an answer.
Nationwide, the workshops are as varied as the leaders of the 300-plus councils in the United States. Some sessions feature a day full of marketing know-how from a local businesswoman. Others are more like pep rallies by the troop’s mom-in-charge.
To customers, cookie season means $3.50 a pop for a cartonload of calories and the once-a-year thrill of Thin Mints, the perennial top-seller.
But to the Girl Scouts, the annual cookie sale ensures the cash flow that will help fund each regional council’s annual budget. Each council troop also squirrels away part of the cookie funds to help pay for field trips, which vary in scope and expense based on ages and Scout levels. Trips run the gamut from day hikes on Georgia’s Stone Mountain to a trek through the Grand Canyon.
The stakes are a lot higher these days than when the Girl Scouts started selling cookies–at a quarter a box–as a grass-roots effort in the early 1920s. This year’s 50 cent price hike to $3.50 a box was the first in several years, spurred by mounting baker costs.
After paying the baker, local Girl Scout council programs receive roughly 70 percent of the cookie proceeds, including a portion that goes directly to the neighborhood troops for activities and individual prizes for meeting sales goals.
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Edited by Lara Weber (lweber@tribune.com) and alBerto Trevino (atrevino@tribune.com)
