Cookies give scouts a start in business

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Jan 31, 2002 | by Sara Nesbitt

Just when you thought you've worked off that extra holiday poundage, here comes Girl Scout cookie time. You'll see them out in front of grocery stores; you've already been hit up by their parents in your workplace.

Girl Scout cookies mean different things to different people. What are simply delicious snacks for some are hard work - and hard lessons - for the girls who are doing the selling.

And, the annual sales also fatten the budgets for local troops.

"We work on this pretty much all year," said Sherry Goldston, spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts Wagon Wheel Council, which serves the Pikes Peak area. "The cookie selling is our major funding source."

Almost 570,000 boxes were sold in the Colorado Springs area last year, she said.

Girl Scout corporate spokeswoman Alma Powell said many people hold the misconception that the proceeds from the sales go to the national headquarters first.

"All the money stays right there (locally)," Powell said.

At $3 a box, that means more than $1.7 million to help subsidize the local council's 550 Girl Scout troops and programs such as day camps and summer camps.

Revenues from the cookie sales make up about half the council's budget. Other funding comes from private and corporate donations.

For the girls, the experience, and the results, are much different.

"It teaches how to deal with the public, how to deal with a 'no' answer, how to set goals, and how to handle money," said Wagon Wheel Council Executive Director Sandy Taylor.

It's kind of like a crash course in running a business, which includes learning about supply and demand, accounting practices, distribution, customer service and most importantly, how to generate revenues.

"It just teaches a lot about being an entrepreneur, and it builds character," Taylor said.

The sellers start with a training course in early January, and now are in the process of taking pre-orders. The cookies will be trucked in Feb. 18, which is when the real lesson in distribution begins.

"Literally 20 semitractor trailers full of cookies arrive then," said Suzi Arnold, product sales manager. The boxes then are stored at the homes of the volunteer cookie managers, who distribute the boxes for delivery and booth sales at area retailers like Safeway, Wal- Mart, Hobby Lobby and Albertson's.

The scouts even sell the cookies at local military bases such as Fort Carson and the Air Force Academy. In exchange for letting the scouts sell them there, the bases get a few free boxes.

In addition to the organizational skills learned along the way, the sellers also learn how to work with other businesses, like the Richmond, Va.-based Interbake Foods, which makes all the cookies and ships them throughout the country.

"The annual Girl Scout cookie sales become an institution at our stores," said Safeway spokesman Jeff Stroh. "The kids that actually generate the revenue get to see what comes from hard work. That just makes the program all the better."

- Sara Nesbitt may be reached at 636-0235 or snesbitt@gazette.com