Girl Scouts have all sorts of 21st-century tactics for selling their deliciously addictive cookies.
Gone are the days when little pigtailed cherubs had to rely on nervous giggles and perky smiles to attract customers.
Amazon and other websites sell any number of eye-catching, professionally designed banners and signs to help scouts attract potential purchasers.
Enterprising youngsters are no longer limited to grocery-store entrances to sell their sweet, crunchy wares, according to Insider. Now they can score sales over the internet — and yes, they take Venmo and other electronic forms of payment.
The Girl Scouts website even has a handy locator feature where potential customers can enter their ZIP code and find the cookie-sales location nearest them.
Trending:
One enterprising scout in Alaska has found sales success by duplicating the strategy of fast-food restaurants: She created a drive-thru cookie booth and parked it in the Carrs grocery store parking lot in the Anchorage neighborhood of Debarr.
Kaela Malchoff, 17, told KTUU-TV’s Dave Allgood that it took her three years to convert an old 1970s-era camping trailer into a cookie sales booth.
“I scrapped it down to the frame and built it from the ground up,” she told the news outlet.
[embedded content]
The idea, she said, was “mimicking the idea of a coffee kiosk.”
Should we be teaching children more about business and entrepreneurship?
Yes: 100% (72 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
Kaela’s mom and two younger siblings now help her run the booth, which has been drawing plenty of traffic.
One customer told Allgood she appreciated the convenience of the setup. “I don’t have to get out of my car,” she said.
“I can drive up, like McDonald’s, and get what I want,” the woman said. “Drive up, get your cookies and go.”
A couple of customers indicated they were attracted to the bright-purple paint job.
“I’ve driven by it before,” one said. “I’m attracted to purple. It’s my favorite color.”
The woman said she also likes the Girl Scout cookies in the purple box — Samoas, vanilla cookies coated with caramel, coconut and chocolate.
She said she was pleased to see a young person think outside the box with a business plan.
“It’s really refreshing to see somebody that takes an expectation — to go out and sell your cookies — and double times it, triple times it and quadruples it,” she said.
Kaela told Allgood that’s a common reaction from many customers.
“They really give me a lot of compliments of how it’s a smart idea and how it’s very convenient for them,” she said.
It seems she’s discovered the recipe for success: Kaela said her March cookie sales are on track to exceed 5,000 boxes of cookies.
