Have A Taste for Samoas? It's Not Too Late For Girl Scout Cookies

Nowadays, Girl Scout cookie flavors are found in everything from coffee to ice cream. In an ordinary year, the availability of Girl Scout cookies would have been long gone. Cookie sales in our area generally begin in January and are over by April.

“What we do is try to end in the two major spring break time periods for our schools,” Julie Somogyi, vice president of member and mission engagement for Girl Scouts of America said.

This year is no ordinary year and the pandemic has allowed for purchase of Girl Scout cookies well into the summer. If you have a taste for Samoas, all hope is not lost.

When residents of Will, Cook, Grundy, Kendall and Kane Counties began our stay-at-home order in mid-March, there were about two weeks of Girl Scout cookie sales left. In those early weeks, Somogyi said it was not clear how long it would be until the state was opened again and girls could safely resume in-person sales.

“When we all were faced with this the first weeks of the pandemic, our first concern was to just tell the girls to pause,” Somogyi said. “We were really advising people and then we actually did mandate that they not go out

It is now June and in-person cookie sales did not resume in our area. But sales have continued.

The ability to keep selling cookies is great news for Linda Colon’s daughter Sydney Barnes because she has about 1,400 boxes more to go.

Three years ago, Barnes, 13, of Frankfort, set a goal for herself. She wanted to sell 5,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies and earn a trip to Disney. She succeeded. Last year, she did it again. And this year, she, with the help of her mom, Barnes is on track to once again succeed. But this year looks a lot different than years past.

“We were out every weekend.” Colon said of the sales three years ago. “We were selling cookies every weekend.”

Sales start in January and go until March in an ordinary year.

The second year that the Colon family aimed for the sale of 5,000 boxes of cookies, they refined their process. When the pandemic happened, though, they needed to figure out how to sell a large number of cookies without doing so in person.

“We’re just doing word of mouth,” Colon said.

And they are delivering the cookies, which creates an opportunity for Colon and Barnes to bond.

“The adventure has been, I would say, fun, but kind of hard at the same time,” Barnes said. “The first year it was harder.

“I had to give up my weekends the whole summer. This year it was easier because we knew what we had to do.”

Barnes said the use of social media helped. As did the assistance that Girl Scouts of America have created to help sell cookies during the pandemic.

“It’s a matching system,” Somogyi said.”What we have had to do is get really creative.

“What we have done is that we asked our troop leaders from all over our council to let us know if they have 10 cases or more of any cookies. We had about 95 troops submit that they are looking for assistance.”

The troops and individual girls who are competing for prizes or to top their own sales from last year are still able to do so even within the matching system. Colon and Barnes are now helping sell for other troops as well as their own.

“They are purchasing directly from the troops but we are able to make those connections directly.” Somogyi said. “Everything will get matched to the person that is closest in that area.”

For troop leader Marie Sjostrom, the pandemic has meant seeing the best in people. Sjostrom lives in Gardner, but has troop members in the Channahon-Minooka area. Her daughter Gianna is the second highest seller in the region.

“I’m a very passionate leader,” Sjostrom said. “It’s not about the cookies, it’s about big dreams.”

What Sjostrom saw when the pandemic hit though, was an opportunity to give back to the community. Instead of just trying to sell the boxes, she approached the community and invited them to donate boxes to first responders that she would then deliver.

“We had a couple people donate to nursing homes, to their work, employees and a lot to the hospital,” she said. “One person donated to a food pantry.”

Cookie sales are really just a part of what Girl Scouts of America do and how they encourage girls to be resilient and kind. Somogyi said the organization has moved all the ways in which girl scouts interact online and she has been thrilled in seeing how they girls are filling virtual spaces.

“What is most heartening about this is to see the excitement of a lot of girls who are doing amazing things - sewing masks, sending virtual messages,” she said. “They are thinking about how to be a girl scout, even in this time of not meeting face to face.”

To that end, the Girl Scouts of America hosted a virtual camp out over Memorial Day weekend.

We basically sold out,” she said “We (had) more than 1,000 families that signed up for that experience.”

To order cookies, visit the Girl Scouts of of Greater Chicago, Northwest Indiana website and fill out the form. They will match you with a troop and you can coordinate cookies for yourself or donations directly with the troop leader.