Girl Scout cookie booth advice

[minnie1012]

Hi Its my daughter's first year in Girl Scouts (Daisy 1st grade) so obviously mine too as a cookie Mom (no one else volunteered so I felt bad and did). So I just placed my order yesterday and I think I may have over ordered for the booth sale (we can't return). I probably should have factored in my surplus and used some of that for the booth sale but I didn't. Anyway, I had a few questions:

Do you do well at booth sales? Will we sell alot? We are doing 3 hours on a Sunday at an indoor mall (in front of a Macy's)

What do I need to bring? I imagine a table, some signs, the cookies, lol, Anything I'm forgetting?

How much money do you bring for change and stuff?

Thank so much for your help!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

How many cases did you order for the booth sale?

Generally you go heavy on the big sellers and then you don't order cookies for the booth sales that are not big sellers. You use the surplus for those and when you run out, you run out. (So take notes as to what sells and what you run out of for next yr).

Start emailing people you know, tell the mom's the surplus that needs to be sold. If the surplus is not sold it will come out of your profit, make them aware of the situation.

Set up 2 more booth sales right now & hopefully you can snag a grocery store. You can always cancel if you were to sell out.

Other thing you need to bring is a pad of paper. You need to ledger the cookies you sell at the booth. It starts to get confusing.

You will have mom's come back to you and request more cookies in which you apply to their dd's total.

So you have to keep it all straight. Take notes, trust me.

A couple of chairs would be nice to sit in.

Daisy's can sell the heck out of cookies so make sure you rotate girls so they are not there too long. That way mom's can drop in, hopefully help with their dd and then leave and another set of mom's/dd's shows up. You don't want the whole troop there at once and you must follow Safety-Wise.

 

[mickeyboat]

Hi Its my daughter's first year in Girl Scouts (Daisy 1st grade) so obviously mine too as a cookie Mom (no one else volunteered so I felt bad and did). So I just placed my order yesterday and I think I may have over ordered for the booth sale (we can't return). I probably should have factored in my surplus and used some of that for the booth sale but I didn't. Anyway, I had a few questions:

Do you do well at booth sales? Will we sell alot? We are doing 3 hours on a Sunday at an indoor mall (in front of a Macy's)

What do I need to bring? I imagine a table, some signs, the cookies, lol, Anything I'm forgetting?

How much money do you bring for change and stuff?

Thank so much for your help!

We do great at booth sales, especially if it is the beginning of cookie season.

You are going to want to keep track of the numbers of cookies you sell. It will help for incentives for the girls and it will help so you know which ones to order for booth sales next year.

It is hard to refuse to buy cookies from Daisies. They are adorable.

Does your Service Unit or Council have cookie costumes you can borrow?

You might want to bring some plastic grocery bags for people to carry their cookies home.

Good luck. I love booth sales!

 

[ncmickeyluvr]

My daughter isn't a scout this year.....she loved it but had to choose between other activities...but we've done lots of booth sales. Here they take turns with other troops outside of Walmart, Lowe's Home Improvement, and grocery stores. They sold ALOT....bring as many cases as you can. Have a plan to get more if you run out. Have as many girls as you can...in uniform. Keep the parents to a minimum....collecting cash and supervising and staying out of the way. People have a hard time saying no to little children No problem at all saying no to their Mom. We always made signs and tried to make the table colorful. Another thing that they did was make some small token to give out to EVERYONE....not just the people who bought. For example, around valentine's day they made paper valentines and handed them out. People had a hard time walking past without slowing down if a little girl was handing them something.

Edited to say that I didn't mean have as many children there as you can at one time....we always had a sign up sheet and the kids signed up for a time slot. 5 or 6 girls at a time for an hour or so each.

 

[LaraK]

Make sure your Daisies are in full uniform. Girls in full uniform sell many more cookies (once they're Brownies...the beanies are the hook). Instruct the girls to be polite and to thank everyone, whether they sell or not. Again, if the girls meet the image of a scout, they'll clean up.

 

[RunningGirl]

My daughter isn't a scout this year.....she loved it but had to choose between other activities...but we've done lots of booth sales. Here they take turns with other troops outside of Walmart, Lowe's Home Improvement, and grocery stores. They sold ALOT....bring as many cases as you can. Have a plan to get more if you run out. Have as many girls as you can...in uniform. Keep the parents to a minimum....collecting cash and supervising and staying out of the way. People have a hard time saying no to little children No problem at all saying no to their Mom. We always made signs and tried to make the table colorful. Another thing that they did was make some small token to give out to EVERYONE....not just the people who bought. For example, around valentine's day they made paper valentines and handed them out. People had a hard time walking past without slowing down if a little girl was handing them something.

Good advice here. If the moms are hawking the cookies and doing all the work while the girls are sitting around talking I walk right on by.

 

[itsheresomewhere]

Just please don't do what happened to us. Tell the scouts' mothers when people say no to accept it. I said no thanks you and the not nice word lady started telling my child to tell me she wanted cookies. I said no again and she called me something not nice that I was depriving my child.

BTW- this booth had 4 MOMS working and 1 girl scout.

 

[Disneyland_Mama]

We do pretty well with booth sales. Last year we sold over 500 at 3 four hour booths.

My advice:

* Do an excel spreadsheet to keep your cookie count in order.

* If parents want extras after their initial order, do cash and carry only.

* Some great marketing tools: Make the cute cookie bundles and wrap them in a pretty bow, open a box of the new Berry cookie and break into pieces and have the girls hand out samples, (We did this when the Dulce de Leche was new and no one had heard of it. We sold out of those.), set up your table and add some balloons or something festive to get attention. Have fun!

* In our council, Daisy's cannot work a cookie booth for more than 1 hour. I would only have 4 girls at a time, or it can get a bit overwhelming.


Last year my troop of 10 sold 1700 boxes of cookies. This year our initial order was over 1500 and I ordered another 500 for our first weekend of boothing.

Good luck!

 

[My2Cinderellas]

The big 3 are Thin Mints, Samoas/Carmel Delites, and Tagalongs/Peanut Butter Patties. These are always the biggest sellers. Need a few of PB Sandwich/DoSiDo's, Trefoil/Shortbread and All-Abouts/Thanks-a-lot. The lemonade cookies don't sell very well here but I like them. I think I'm the only customer under 60 that buys a box. The worst seller is the daisy things - cinnamon teddy graham tasting things.

Have lots of change ready to go, and have the kids take the lead. Here the parents must handle $$ but have the girls do everything else.

Also - our council orders all the extra cookies to cover booth sales and add-on orders. It's nice, the troops and service units don't have to mess with it. We pick booth stuff up from our service unit cookie coordinator - she is at the council office almost daily to replenish her stash.

 

[minnie1012]

Thanks these were all great tips.

The girls in the troop are all so adorable so hopefully I can get them to come out and be at the booth. Its not the most cooperative much of parents so that will be an issue!

Thanks so much!

 

[minnie1012]

How many cases did you order for the booth sale?

I ordered 2 cases each of thin mints, tagalongs, samoas, dosidos, trefoils. Then I will have the surplus cookies.

 

[Magic Mom]

You should be fine with what you ordered. If not, then you can pick up another booth to sell off the surplus, or go door to door with you wagon.
Make sure the girls do the selling and coach them on manners ahead of time. One thing I was told by another leader that made sense to me is to tell the girls to just say "thank you," if someone says NO, instead of saying "thank you anyway." It just sounds nicer, and I've had people come back and buy and comment about that. it sounds wierd, but it's true.

Since you are in the mall and people will be shopping, make sure you bring bags for people to carry their cookies in. Also, signs plenty of change, water and a snack, something to hold trash in and a nice table cloth.

Coach the girls how to answer the question "which cookies do you like?" or "Which cookies are the best?" Also make sure they know a little bit about the cookies so they can at least answer a few questions even though they are still pretty young.

 

[minnie1012]

I forgot to mention our cookie booth is in front of Macy's but across from the Disney store : ). I thought that was too cute!

 

[OceanAnnie]

I forgot to mention our cookie booth is in front of Macy's but across from the Disney store : ). I thought that was too cute!

That is cute. If you have enough people, I'd have 2 tables. Maybe have one near a food court. People are in that area because they are hungry, that scenario might lend itself to more sales.

 

[2Kds2K9]

My biggest tip is to make sure that the girls are focused and polite. If a customer says no, then our girls usually just say "Thank you, have a nice day." If a customer says, "I already bought my GS cookies", the girls reply "Thank you for supporting Girl Scouts." Most of the time the person will stop and buy another box when they hear that.

We had the girls sing some of their GS songs one year and that was huge! Couldn't keep up with the sales.

Also, have them stay focused on the sales and customers. Not chatting amongst themselves. And the older girls should leave their cell phones at home!

Good luck!

 

[minnie1012]

That is cute. If you have enough people, I'd have 2 tables. Maybe have one near a food court. People are in that area because they are hungry, that scenario might lend itself to more sales.

We are actually very close to the food court. I'm just concerned with lugging all this into the mall. Anyone done one in a mall? Any tips of the easiest way to get everything in?

 

[aprilgail2]

[

I ordered 2 cases each of thin mints, tagalongs, samoas, dosidos, trefoils. Then I will have the surplus cookies.

You should have no problem selling those out- we usually get 6 cases each of samoas, thin mints and tagalongs and 4 cases of all the rest when we have booth sales. But we can just return anything that we don't sell- we wouldn't even bother having a booth sale if there was a chance of us getting stuck with unsold cookies- thats insane! When we sell at the train station to the commuters coming home we can do over 200 boxes in a 3 hour period and come out with over 25.00 in "tips"....lost of people just hand you a few dollars but don't want any cookies-last year one nice man handed the girls a 20.00 bill but wanted no cookies!

We are actually very close to the food court. I'm just concerned with lugging all this into the mall. Anyone done one in a mall? Any tips of the easiest way to get everything in?

We used a hand truck and just wheeled them all in. If you can borrow the cookie costume from your council...sure makes your group stand out. Also the less kids there the better- its great to have 3 or even 4 but more than that is more of a pain than anything. We give them a 2 hour span to be there and then tell the parents that they MUST pick them up after the 2 hours (we are NOT there to babysit while the parents have a free day to themselves) then the next group comes and stays for 2 hours etc. We also put the kids that get to wild together into seperate time slots which makes it much easier.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

I ordered 2 cases each of thin mints, tagalongs, samoas, dosidos, trefoils. Then I will have the surplus cookies.

Heck that is nothing. You will be fine.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

You should have no problem selling those out- we usually get 6 cases each of samoas, thin mints and tagalongs and 4 cases of all the rest when we have booth sales. But we can just return anything that we don't sell- we wouldn't even bother having a booth sale if there was a chance of us getting stuck with unsold cookies- thats insane!

You have no choice so you sell them with your council rules. How nice that you don't get stuck with cookies.

 

[minnie1012]

You should have no problem selling those out- we usually get 6 cases each of samoas, thin mints and tagalongs and 4 cases of all the rest when we have booth sales. But we can just return anything that we don't sell- we wouldn't even bother having a booth sale if there was a chance of us getting stuck with unsold cookies- thats insane! When we sell at the train station to the commuters coming home we can do over 200 boxes in a 3 hour period and come out with over 25.00 in "tips"....lost of people just hand you a few dollars but don't want any cookies-last year one nice man handed the girls a 20.00 bill but wanted no cookies!



We used a hand truck and just wheeled them all in. If you can borrow the cookie costume from your council...sure makes your group stand out. Also the less kids there the better- its great to have 3 or even 4 but more than that is more of a pain than anything. We give them a 2 hour span to be there and then tell the parents that they MUST pick them up after the 2 hours (we are NOT there to babysit while the parents have a free day to themselves) then the next group comes and stays for 2 hours etc. We also put the kids that get to wild together into seperate time slots which makes it much easier.

Thanks! My troop leader said she has a hand truck so she is going to bring that.