If you ask a Girl Scout about why they’re standing in front of their local grocery store slinging Thin Mints, they won’t say they’re doing it to raise funds. Or, at least, they’re not supposed to. The answer they’re instructed to give is that selling delicious snacks is an exercise in entrepreneurship and the value of hard work in building a business.
Similarly, for the hungry cookie monsters lurking inside all of us, getting our hands on Girl Scout cookies is less about our ability to pay than it is a merit badge-worthy test of tracking down the nearest troop’s upcoming sale. The only other option is to know a scout personally, get her to let you fill out a paper order form by hand, and then wait who know how long for delivery.
All that is about to change now that the Girl Scouts are bringing the whole process into the 21st Century. Yes, you’ll soon be able to order girl scout cookies online.
The Wall Street Journal reports that one of the highlights of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has been a demonstration of a new smartphone app developed by the Girl Scouts of the USA.
However, since the goal of the entire cookie selling endeavor is to teach scouts the skills necessary to run a business, it’s not quite as simple as just logging in and downloading the app because that would be cutting the kids out of the process entirely. Instead, the app is for the Girl Scouts themselves and allows them to streamline the ordering process.
This technological upgrade does have some benefits for the consumer. Specifically, getting your order into the system immediately means those three boxes of Peanut Bitter Patties and two boxes of Rah-Rah Raisins you requested will arrive at your house in a few days rather than a few weeks.
The app goes hand-in-hand with another recent initiative by the Girl Scouts to move their annual cookie drive onto the Internet. Late last year, the organization announced that would allow scouts to build their own custom, not to mention privacy-protected, websites and email letters through which they can sell cookies. Much like with the app, cookie lovers will have go though an individual scout or troop to order cookies.
“It is all about the girls and building future business leaders,” Kelly Parisi, chief communications executive of the Girl Scouts of the USA, told the Journal. “They are learning about e-marketing, managing money, and additionally creating their first websites.”
Even so, finding Girl Scouts selling cookies has also gotten easier. The group has a Girl Scout Cookie Finder mobile app available for both iOS and Android. This one is available to the public and can be used to locate where scouts are selling cookies near you.
When you finally get the cookies, just try to exercise the slightest bit of self-control and not eat all of them in a single sitting. Sadly, there’s still no app for that.
ht WSJ | Photo by Drmies/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
