A parking lot sweet escape

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This article was published 16/04/2021 (1862 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It took the La Salle Girl Guides about 10 minutes to sell out of chocolate mint cookies on the second day of their drive-thru sale.

For once, instead of going to the customers, the customers came to them — in idling cars, in the parking lot of Caisse Community Centre, with money for up to four boxes of treats.

The guiding unit had to sell 120 packs of cookies this April. The Manitoba branch of Girl Guides had a large surplus of chocolatey mints due to a lack of units selling in the fall, so the organization mandated Manitoban units to sell at least 120 boxes of sweets, according to Allison Falconer, one of the La Salle unit’s leaders.

Of course, COVID-19 made this a challenge. The girls couldn’t go door-to-door like normal; they haven’t been able to do so in more than a year.

A parent came up with the idea: how about a drive-thru?

So, beginning at 5:30 p.m. on April 6 and 7, the unit set up a table in the community centre’s parking lot, grabbed signs advertising its products, and hit the road to direct cars its way.

“People seemed to like it,” Allison said. “They certainly seemed to be coming in droves.”

She planned to sell half the cookies each night. Instead, 80 per cent were gone after the first evening.

The girls sold the final 24 batches in almost the time it took to set up the table on the final evening, Allison said.

Girl Guide cookies have been harder to come by this year. 

“Normally, we would have a lot more, but they cut back at the factory this year and last year because they knew it was going to be harder to sell,” Allison said.

La Salle’s unit orders 1,200 cookie boxes to sell in a typical year, Allison said. Between last fall and this spring, the number dropped to 240.

Manitoban Girl Guides aren’t selling their typical springtime cookies, the chocolate and vanilla mix. The chocolatey mints are a fall special, but the cookies didn’t all sell in 2020 and are now an April snack.

The La Salle Girl Guides sold 120 boxes in the fall by way of parents selling to friends and family.

Girl Guides of Canada couldn’t speak about its national cookie sale trends, according to Elaine Cullingham, the provincial operations lead of the organization’s Manitoba and Saskatchewan Council. 

Cookie sales have probably decreased because membership has declined during the pandemic, Cullingham said.

“We anticipate this will have a come-back effect once the pandemic is at an in-person sustainable place,” she wrote in an email. 

Last spring, large retailers like Sobeys and Loblaws began selling the desserts in their stores to replace kids going door-to-door with the goods. The COVID-19 pandemic stopped the tradition with its March 2020 arrival in Manitoba.

In October, Girl Guides of Canada began offering their cookies for purchase online, for the first time ever.

Kirsten Falconer, Allison’s daughter and a fifth-year Girl Guide, said she enjoyed the drive-thru sale more than travelling to people’s homes.

“We got a lot of honks and waves and fist bumps (when people were) in their cars,” Kirsten said.

The nine-year-old said it took less time, and she was still able to see her friends — in a safe, masked way.

“I think it went really good,” she said, adding the signs were a big help.

The La Salle Girl Guides don’t have any cookies left to sell at this time.