This was our first year as part of a Girl Scout Troop and I'll go ahead and call the cookie sales experience "extremely well organized chaos". Our Troop Leader and Cookie Leader are incredible, and they had a system for everything (taking orders, submitting orders, delivery and sorting, booth sales, and money collection - it was all done to perfection). It wasn't until we added the girls that things got a bit chaotic (at times! only at times!), but I'll hand it to them too, because for being (mostly) aged 5 through 10, they were fantastic and enthusiastic sales reps! Cora did her job well - she was brave and succinct and completely adorable. Nobody said no to her when she asked them "Hi, I'm Cora and I'm a Girl Scout. Would you like to buy some cookies?"
Delivery day looked like this:
Parents arrived as the last of the cases were unloaded from the semi truck and got to work sorting them into stacks for each girl/family (and we did them in order of sales volume, so the stacks with the most cookies were closest to the drop pile). The girls received their preorder incentive awards at this time too (Cora earned an apron, hair ties, a bandanna, and a t-shirt).
This is what Cora's stack looked like once I got it home and sorted by variety:
Obviously, our crowd prefers Thin Mints and Tagalongs...
Next up was sorting by order, for which we had many (Cora pre-sold a total of 211 actual boxes of cookies, not including the Cookies for Heroes or online orders). We waited until we put the kids to bed, then Jay helped me get everything organized. One set went into the wagon for neighborhood deliveries, one set went onto the counter for friends and running buddies, and another set went into the car to take to work for our coworkers (and their families!)
Once I got to my office, I had to resort everything (next year I'll know better and invest in a bag of large rubberbands to keep everything together in transit), then stack orders with sticky-notes showing how much each person owed (in case I wasn't in my office when they dropped by to pick up their cookies).
(That's not even all the orders... I had to spread them to two other shelves...)
Our Troop ordered a total of 540 cases (that's almost 6500 boxes of cookies...) in order to cover everyone's preorders and also have plenty set aside for booth sales. By agreeing to work at least two booth sales, Cora secured another 46 boxes to her preorder total. Due to soccer Saturdays, we signed up for the afternoon Sunday cookie booths, and were lucky to work with her buddy Cara Beth (as well as lots of other sweet girls). They took turns standing at the doors and directing buyers over to the booth, sorting cookies and restocking the table display, and exchanging money. They wore their matching aprons, they smiled, and they sold an incredible number of cookies (over 16 cases) on their first Sunday. Can you guess what Cora's favorite task was? (Other than exchanging money and hoping to be allowed to keep it... tough lesson, that first transaction was...) That's right - sorting cookies on the display table! The organization sang to her OCD heart.
(The girls earned almost $100 in donations and Cora also loved getting to stuff bills into the donation box. Like I said, people had a hard time saying no to these cuties, so most people that didn't want any would still give them a dollar for our Cookies for Heroes campaign.)
(At one point it started to sprinkle and one of the dads rescued us with his soccer sun tent. At which point the clouds went away. But we were prepared!)
(Lining up cookies on the display table - her favorite task!)
The following week, Jay took the kids around the neighborhood to deliver the cookies (and managed to get all but two houses on the first try!) - this sales event truly was a family effort!
Then it came down to one last sale (and very few cookies remaining!) A couple more hours of smiles and parading around in broken-down cookie case boxes, and we were done. There was less traffic for that sale, less cookies, and slightly less effort by the youngest girls, but they got it done. We sold our last few boxes as we loaded the empty display table and turned in our money.
All that's left to do now is turn in our money and thank the girls and our leaders for a successful season. I'm very proud of Cora for the work she put into this fundraiser and I think she learned (or at least practiced) a lot along the way (confidence, gratitude, perseverance, organization, politeness, and the value of money!) Thank you so much for helping Cora succeed this year! "We appreciate your help and we hope you enjoy your cookies!"
