Girl Scout Cookies online: invites required, limited nationwide roll-out
The end-times for your wallet are near: Girl Scout Cookies will soon be allowed to be sold online. The Girl Scouts' Chief Digital Cookie Executive (that's a real title) Sarah Angel-Johnson has spoken. This is the first time Girl Scout Cookies will be available direct through the Girl Scouts online since the internet was first activated. Girl Scout Cookie sales generate "an estimated" $800 million in cookie sales a year – this online initiative could bring between 50-150% more in the next 12 months.
The initiative is going by the name Digital Cookie, and it won't be available in all areas. Two separate digital sales platforms will be made available, each of them depending on market area.
Option 1: Invites
Some girls will need to market their online cookie business with customers via email. They'll need to get your email address in order to send you an invite code, which will allow you to get in to their troop cookie sales webpage. Some girls will have their own "personalized cookie website."
Option 2: Digital Cookie App
Other girls will be using a "unique mobile app" that allows customers to buy through their phone or tablet. This system will be using a "non-personalized website" that you'll be able to log in to in order to purchase cookies. This system also requires that the girl contact her customers directly.
The video you see below is from an earlier initiative by the Girl Scouts to enter the mobile age, taking their first whack at it with a "select your favorite cookie" app.
Contact
Girl Scouts of the United States of America makes clear that "Digital Cookie was designed with each girl's safety in mind, and therefore she must initiate contact with people she knows to sell cookies."
This isn't a broad-spectrum cover-all system for the entire United States. It's not a single webpage that anyone will be able to go to to order cookies 365 days a year.
Are they the same cookies?
Yes, absolutely these are the same cookies made by the same bakers they've always been made by. ABC Bakers and Little Brownie Bakers are the two bakers that've been used by Girl Scouts of the United States of America for many years, and both are participating in this online sales system Digital Cookie.
ABC Bakers will use the sales system known as COCOdirect, a system they own and manage. Little Brownie Bakers will be using the system known as Digital Order Card.
When?
This system is live now, but it'll really depend on when or IF your local troop is deciding to participate. Each troop will decide on their own, and each girl scout will have to decide whether or not she wants to participate.