For some consumers, Girl Scout cookie season is the high point of the year, better than the holidays or spring break. People wait all year to load up on Thin Mints, Tagalongs, and Samoas, hoping their local Scouts will set up tables outside grocery stores or ring their doorbells with an order sheet in hand.
But those activities have been severely curtailed, due to COVID-19 risks, as well as general societal norms that frown on unsolicited sales, unexpected visitors, and allowing children to approach unknown people’s homes—even if the situation is completely innocent. Accordingly, the Girl Scouts and their organizing entity have sought creative ways to solicit orders and then deliver them to hungry consumers.
Throughout the country, GNC stores agreed to let local troops set up tables to sell cookies outside their doors, which helps the troops overcome potential bans by the local grocery stores where they previously appeared. Still, this option is subject to the in-person concerns that might keep parents from allowing their children to hawk the cookies to strangers, as well as those that prevent shoppers from stopping to grab a box.
Thus, more creatively, the Girl Scouts of America developed a partnership with Grubhub to take and deliver orders. The delivery service waived fees to the Girl Scouts, likely recognizing the positive press and increased interactions it might gain from helping the well-known nonprofit organization continue a long-standing tradition. The Scouts are in charge of tracking the orders on the Grubhub platform, which also offers the potential benefit of teaching them life and job skills for the future.
Beyond these national initiatives, parents in some local troops have set up their own sales websites and social media pages. If they can gather orders this way, they likely can manage delivery as they have most years, when parents would drive their Scouts around to drop off the boxes. This year, they simply will need to leave the cookies at the door, rather than handing them to the customer in person.
Despite these creative solutions though, the Girl Scouts worry about the disruption to their traditional supply chains. It is difficult to communicate with the vast, diverse markets of people who might have ordered a few boxes from colleagues at the office, a couple more from local Scouts going door-to-door, and then an extra box or two from the table set up outside their grocery store. If none of these conventional channels are open, will they search out and find the other routes to getting cookies? Considering the way some people look forward to them, the chances seem pretty good that they will.
Discussion Question:
- How can the Girl Scouts—whether the national organization or local troops—effectively promote these new purchasing options?
- What channels for ordering and delivering cookies seem likely to persist, even if the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic are lifted, due to safety and other concerns?
Source: Tom Ryan, “Girl Scout Cookie Selling Goes Omnichannel,” Retail Wire, January 20, 2021