Girl Scout Cookie Pitch Goes High-Tech

Feb. 5, 2008— -- It's that time again: Girl Scouts going door-to-door, selling tasty cookies with sweet smiles.

But those days may soon be over.

While many Girl Scouts still sell cookies house-by-house in their neighborhoods, others have set up booths in local stores, where busy customers can buy a box or two of Thin Mints or Samoas on their way home.

Using an online locator, the Girl Scouts of Central Texas have taken the vendor booths a step further. As part of a pilot program, customers can log on to the council's Web site, type in a ZIP code and find out when and where their favorite cookies are being sold.

"It's for people who don't know where the cookie sale might be," said 13-year-old scout Candice Janecka. "It gives them directions, since we're assigned booths at different stores."

Candice regularly sells more than 1,000 boxes of cookies a season.This year, most of her sales are made in booths -- the Cinna-Spins go well with coffee from the local Starbucks -- and she sells boxes of Caramel deLites outside Wal-Mart stores.

"We go out rain or shine," said Candice, "Booths have gotten more popular. You can sell 30 or more boxes, and you get to meet with people."

After 90 years, the cookie sales have grown. Girl Scouts USA estimates that national revenue from cookie sales amounts to about $700 million, based on total sales of 200 million boxes.

"It's a lot of work to go door-to-door. Gas isn't cheap and if you don't know the neighborhood, you might not want to go door-to-door," Diana Janecka, Candice's mother, said. "People will always go, 'We didn't know where the Girl Scouts were.' I'm hoping this will help."

"It's a terrific idea," said Russell Winer, a professor of marketing at New York University, about the Web site. "Rather than relying on people bumping into Girl Scouts wherever they're located, it can direct people and make their search more convenient."

"We know we have customers who have busy schedules," said Etta Moore, chief executive officer of Girl Scouts of Central Texas. The online locator, she said, has doubled the number of monthly hits to the group's Web site. "And one of the neat things is that customers get to see information about our programs on the Web site."