Girl Scouts Ann and Rose VanNelson sell cookies at their booth outside the Dilworth Walmart. (Photos/Russ Hanson.)
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
The afternoon was 30 degrees colder than the North Pole when Jane VanHatten and her daughters, Ann and Rose VanNelson, set up their table outside the Dilworth Walmart to sell the hottest treat of the season – Girl Scout cookies.
Pushing loaded shopping carts toward the girls’ booth, exiting customers quickly formed a chilly crowd around the booth stacked with boxes of those annual delights. Sales were brisk, to put it mildly. Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs, Do-Si-Dos, Lemon-Ups and gluten-free Toffee-Tastics … they drew a steady stream of women and men who were already fixated on their familiar favorites and more than ready for their once-a-year chance to stock up.
“It’s not usually this cold,” mother Jane, a longtime Girl Scout leaders, apologizes. “But our girls can learn from this, too – how to layer up to stay warm …”
“And to put ‘hotties’ in our mittens and our pockets,” Rose, 16, added, referring to the handy chemical pouches that generate a burst of warmth.
The outcome of two frigid hours on the sidewalk was definitely heart-warming: “We sold 115 boxes in just two hours,” 9-year-old Ann reports proudly.
Jane’s daughters are among Girl Scouts in the dozen Moorhead and Sabin troops who, along with counterparts across the river, have been selling boxes of everyone’s favorite cookies since Feb. 11. Through March 20, you’ll find them at booths at many locations – at Moorhead High School Friday, Mac’s Hardware Saturday, and the Village Inn Sunday, as well as other dates over the next three weeks. They’ll be outside Walmart, too, on several more occasions – but depending on the weather.
Jane, who’s a leader of both daughters’ troops, has scouting in her blood. She grew up in the program, earning her Gold Award in high school and serving her first stint as a leader while attending Concordia College. Later. living in Indiana, she signed up again when Rose was in 1st grade. The family returned to Moorhead in 2013 when second daughter Ann was six months old; Jane became a leader of her troop, too, when she started kindergarten. Now, besides supporting both girls’ efforts, Jane works with the Dakota Horizons Council’s local service unit along with her full-time job as a teacher of French and Spanish at Horace High School.
Like their fellow scouts, Ann and Rose are deeply into the annual cookie campaign, working toward a mutual goal of selling 1,000 boxes this season. It’s more than an education in marketing; Girls earn “Dakota Dough” credits to use toward Girl Scouts merchandise, summer camping and trips. Most cookies sell for $5 this year. Of that amount, about $1.25 pays for the product, transportation and promotion. Another dollar goes directly to the troop and members. The balance supports direct service – financial assistance for girls, camp programs, council-wide programs, training for adult volunteers,office locations and staff, and technology and web support.
That technology plays a far bigger part in the Girl Scout campaigns than in days gone by, when knocking on neighborhood doors and persuading parents’ friends played the greatest role in sales success. Times have changed, Jane points out. Today potential buyers can connect with a troop or a booth via the online Cookie Finder, which sorts the nearest troops and booth dates by ZIP code. Girls have their own QR codes, too, to enable quick connection for ordering and reordering.
But face-to-face sales at their booth makes selling fun. Ann tells of a bus driver who pulled up at Walmart with a load of teen boys. While they rushed into the store, the driver spotted the cookies. He was halfway there, Ann remembers, when he muttered, “Shoot! No cash,” and turned around.
“My mom is like, ‘We take cards,’” the 3rd grader reports. “He came back and started stacking up Thin Mints and Tagalongs and Samoas. He ended up buying a whole case – 12 boxes!”
Their efforts do add up. Ann is quick to share favorite memories from Camp Shipwreck, the program they attended last summer. Rose and Jane are looking forward to two trips together in coming months, one to the Dominican Republic and the other to Europe, all earned through cookie sales. “I hope we get to go this year. They’ve been postponed a couple times,” Rose notes. “But the pandemic did give us more time to save up.”
To learn when and where to find the nearest cookie booth, go to the Cookie Finder at GSDakotaHorizons.org and enter your ZIP code. Online ordering is also enabled.
