Girl Scout cookie sales continue despite coronavirus
Morgan Henderson, Greta Fulton and Olivia McIntyre sell Girl Scout cookies outside Walmart March 1.
Greta Fulton gets her cookie orders ready.
Girl Scout troops 52424 and 46289 from Girl Scouts Western Pennsylvania’s North Allegheny East service unit donated Girl Scout cookies to the staff at UPMC-Passavant hospital as a way to send a sweet thank you for the staff’s work and dedication to keep their community safe during the COVID-19 crisis.
Along with basketball tournaments and fickle weather, March is also when sales of Girl Scout cookies reach their peak, when booths overflowing with boxes of Thin Mints, Tagalongs and Do-Si-Dos can be found outside grocery stores and other locations.
The March that ended Tuesday was, of course, a March unlike any we have experienced in our lifetimes. The coronavirus violently upended every aspect of our lives, including the trade in Girl Scout cookies. Once schools were closed and stay-at-home orders issued, many Girl Scouts and their parents were left wondering if boxes of cookies would go unsold.
Would they end up munching on S’mores at their Fourth of July celebration? And that’s even presuming social distancing will have eased by then.
The Girl Scouts of the United States of America has extended the deadline for online sales of cookies through April 19. And the organization hopes booth sales will resume once coronavirus-related restrictions are lifted, “but of course we don’t know when,” according to Stefanie Marshall, public relations manager for the Girl Scouts Western Pennsylvania (GSWPA).
GSWPA has also launched a “Hometown Heroes” initiative to send cookies to first-responders, nursing home staff, medical professionals and other workers directly responding to the coronavirus pandemic. The donations will limit the impact on programs and Girl Scout troops by offsetting the costs of excess cookie inventory.
Contributions can be made at gswpa.org/heroes.
When the coronavirus shutdowns happened, Samantha Allum and her daughters had 31 boxes of cookies left to sell. She asked people to buy them so she could donate them to Washington Hospital, where she works. Every one of them was sold.
Before she sold off and donated the cookies, “people were worried about taking a box,” Allum explained, because of coronavirus fears.
Sales were going pretty well until the coronavirus gained a foothold, according to Elizabeth Fulton, who manages the Girl Scout troops in the Washington and Trinity school districts.
“We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got,” she said. “Our troops still have a lot of cookies still in stock, so we’re doing the best we can. It’s an evolving situation.”