Girl Scout Cookies (Photo : Twitter)
The Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) will soon start converting its famous cookie-selling program to an online version, allowing fans to buy boxes of cookies from their laptops, smartphones, or tablets. That includes the super-popular Thin Mints, Samoas, and Peanut Butter Patties. An early 2015 pilot program proved that GSUSA troops were ready to start selling the sweet baked goods on the Internet through the "Digital Cookie" platform.
A total 160,000 scouts participated in the January pilot. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the girls who used the new Digital Cookie app sold more boxes than during past years. The program sold 2.5 million boxes, which earned $10 million.
In 2011 Girl Scouts CEO Anna Maria Chávez got the idea for the platform while sitting in on a Texas "kitchen cabinet," meeting of teenage Girl Scouts who advise the organization's management. The teens wanted to expand GSUSA's famous cookie drive.
The Girl Scouts organization started to develop Digital Cookie two years later. It added the safety feature of parents/guardians being required to sign-off at certain stages, according to Yahoo. The new platform allows customers to pay via credit cards and processes issues such as shipping.
Friends and family can now buy Girl Scout cookies much easier through Digital Cookie. In the past scouts had to buy them from the company, ask for cash or checks through snail mail, and then ship the boxes of cookies to their loved ones.
Digital Cookies 2.0 will roll out to 90 percent of Girl Scout Councils (local units) in January 2016. It will not completely replace door-to-door and brick-and-mortar store sales, but Chávez hopes the online platform will encourage more scouts to participate in the cookie sales drives.
In some related odd news from Athens-Clarke County in Georgia, police recently reported that a woman stole over 1,500 boxes of Girl Scout cookies valued at around $6,050, according to Athens Banner-Herald. She had picked up the cookies from a Girl Scout supply facility, but had not made any payments and could not be contacted.
Total Girl Scout cookies' sales are an average $800 million yearly. That includes 200 million boxes.
The Girl Scouts of the USA was founded in 1912, and has 1.9 million members today.
Here's the Girl Scouts Cookie Oven:
