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Crunch time
By SHERYL KAY Doorbells and brass knockers have been getting some extra wear and tear since Friday as the Girl Scouts begin their annual cookie sale. In their vests, sashes, jumpers, and skirts, girls from the Brownie level, up through the Seniors, will be going door to door for the next few weeks, bringing the public Thin Mints, Samoas, and six other varieties of Girl Scout cookies. "Yea, I'm ready," says Lauryn Solomon of Country Place. The fourth-grader at the Hillel School of Tampa has been selling cookies for three years. "I feel really excited about selling them because then I know we're going to buy Thin Mints, and I really like eating the Thin Mints," she says. "They're better than the store kind." But even at the tender age of 9, Lauryn understands the deeper financial rewards. "It's fun because we can raise money for the troop and then we can go places like camping, and horseback riding, and sleepovers and MOSI and the Lowry Park Zoo," she says. Cookie sales have been the Girl Scouts' fundraising vehicle for 85 years, and are almost as old as the organization, which this year celebrates its 90th birthday. Locally, 72 percent of the money raised through cookie sales will go to the Girl Scouts of Suncoast Council Inc., which serves just over 20,000 Scouts in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties. Each regional council sets its own price per box depending on its costs from approved Girl Scout cookie bakers across America, as well as market considerations. The Suncoast Council, which buys its cookies from the Little Brownie Bakers division of Keebler Foods Co., charges $3 per box. Of each box sold, the troop retains 50 cents to spend at the girls' discretion. The Suncoast Council will use the remaining $2.50 per box to maintain five campsites and program facilities, train volunteers, fund program scholarships, and procure materials and supplies. Last year the Suncoast Council Scouts sold 1,576,110 boxes of cookies, says communications manager Felicia Johnson. The bestseller? Thin Mints. Each girl participates in cookie training, then follows a prescribed set of rules designed to maximize her selling potential in a polite and safe way. Parents must accompany all Brownie and Junior level girls, and no girl may enter a stranger's house. Selling through a Web page is not allowed; however, it's okay to e-mail friends and family that you have cookies for sale. Each girl then develops her own sales tricks. "I go to these apartments by me because nobody ever goes there, and I get a lot of orders from there," says 11-year-old Becky Lindgren of Lutz. "I sold 600 boxes one year because I got most of the orders from the apartments, and I also get more in a day because I walk very quickly," says the fifth-grader at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic School. Besides earning patches and raising money for her troop, Becky has won several prizes, including a medal for top seller, a keychain, a compact disc holder, a beach chair, a sleeping bag and a stuffed animal. Jessica DeRosa, 15, of Town 'N Country is another leading marketer. Jessica has been top seller for two years, one year distributing more than 1,700 boxes of cookies. "I have certain people who have been ordering from me for years so I call them and say "Hi, it's Jessica DeRosa, and it's cookie time again,' " says the 10th-grader at Blake High School, who maintains a preference file on her regular customers. Cookie sales fall primarily to the Scouts, but troop members' parents do get involved. Moms, dads, brothers and sisters all help in the sales effort. "The cookie mom" plays an especially important role. She is the troop's bookkeeper, cookie hauler/distributor and all-around cookie sales expert. Some moms make it look easy. But, in fact, the cookie mom has a complex and very time-consuming job. Since 1989, Laura DeRosa, Jessica's mom, has been her daughter's troop leader and cookie mom. The 46-year-old intensive care nurse, is also the neighborhood cookie director. In that role, she oversees 39 troops, each troop averaging 10 girls, and 35 troops are eligible for cookie sales this year. (The youngest, Daisies, do not sell cookies.) "The most important thing for a cookie mom is to remember dates," DeRosa says. "You have to know what day to turn in your order, what day to pick up the cookies, what day to make deposits, and you can't miss any of them." But keeping a calendar is the least of the cookie mom's concerns. Her job starts before the selling ever begins. Each cookie mom (yes, there have been a few cookie dads) must go for training. Even veterans must attend. Then the cookie mom trains her troop. Permission slips are signed, and a variety of topics covered: Safety (don't ever sell alone or enter homes), paperwork (let the customer fill out the order form and do not accept checks for orders of less than $20), sales techniques (urge customers to buy a box for charity) and cookie facts (they're kosher, freeze well and taste great). When the order arrives, cookie moms distribute the sometimes massive load. "The average number of cases for a troop might be 150-160 cases," DeRosa says. But she recalled one year when she was cookie director: "They pulled up in front of my house at 8 a.m., and for the next three hours unloaded thousands of cases," says DeRosa. "We have a two-car garage that we turned into a room, and in the middle of that there is a pool table, and those cases stood floor to ceiling, and every inch of the room was covered except for maybe 2 feet just around the pool table." Troop members continue to sell, working from booths outside supermarkets and catching last-minute orders. Then, they and their families distribute the cookies and collect money from their customers. That money gets turned in to, you guessed it, the cookie mom! With the all of the deposits in place, and the sale ending, the cookie mom makes her final tallies, completes the paperwork, deposits the troop's share of the money, then sends a check for the remainder to council. Her duty is done once she has ordered and distributed patches, prizes, and awards that each girl won, based on the final number of boxes sold. "It's about a 40- to 60-hour job," says DeRosa. "I do it because I like the challenge of it, I like to organize things, and I wanted to be more active in the activities my daughter is involved with." In the end, it's really all about the girls. "The sales are totally optional," says Becky Lindgren's mom, Patty. The 44-year-old is also a registered nurse and a neighborhood director of 40 troops. "If a girl does choose to do it, it's a great learning experience for safety, responsibility, math, money." It's also an exercise in leadership. Jessica DeRosa isn't sure whether she wants another 1,700-box season. "When I was younger, I couldn't wait to go out and sell," she says. "I still do it and I still enjoy it, but I think it would mean more to the younger girls to be the number one seller, so I want to give them a chance." Biggest sellers:Thin Mints -- 26% Samoas- 19% Tagalongs -- 13% Do-si-dos- 12% Trefoils -- 11% The other varieties combined account for the remaining 19%. Varieties of cookies available this year:Thin Mints -- mint wafers covered in chocolate Samoas -- vanilla cookies covered in caramel, toasted coconut and cocoa Do-si-dos -- oatmeal with peanut butter filling Trefoils -- shortbread cookies Tagalongs -- peanut butter patties with chocolate coating Aloha Chips -- macadamia nuts and white fudge chips All Abouts -- shortbreads with fudge-coated bottoms and messages on top Ole Ole -- vanilla cookies covered in pecan chips, coconut and powdered sugar All Girl Scout cookies are made with 100 percent vegetable oil, are kosher and contain no preservatives. Want to buy cookies but don't know any Scouts? In Hillsborough, call (813) 271-4475 ext. 238 between Feb. 24 and March 17. In a week of peak Girl Scout cookie production, Little Brownie bakeries use:-- 875,000 lbs. of flour -- 650,000 lbs. of sugar -- 300,000 lbs. of shortening -- 145,000 lbs. of peanut butter -- 450,000 lbs. chocolate coating -- 50,000 lbs. of cocoa Each batch of dough weighs 1,200 to 1,500 lbs. It takes 20 minutes to mix dough; one batch lasts 20-30 minutes and takes 7-8 minutes to bake. Most calories per serving: Tagalongs, 2 cookies, 140 calories Fewest calories per serving: Ole Ole, 5 cookies, 140 calories Gift of Caring is the Girl Scout community service project. Scouts will ask customers to buy an extra box for charity; those who do may treat the donation as a tax-deductible contribution. Scouts who sell cookies earn participation patches or buttons and qualify for awards based on the volume sold. A case of Girl Scout cookies holds 12 boxes of cookies and is about 15 inches high, 8 inches wide and 8 inches deep. A compact car can comfortably hold about 26 cases of cookies. A minivan without seats holds about 136 cases. A commercial moving van holds about 2,617 cases. Source: Girl Scouts of Suncoast Council Inc.
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