What Makes a Good Cookie Booth?

Submitted by Troop 80671

We have had many Girl Scout cookie booths over the years. Because we have a large combined group of 40 girls, we even have several booth sales a each year to give everyone a chance to participate.  Leaders often ask us “What makes a good cookie booth?” There is no right or wrong way to set up a booth. We have done so many different things. Today I want to share some helpful tips and ideas to set up your next cookie booth to be successful.

Gift of Caring Box

We always decorate a box to hold cookie donations for each booth. Each location has a charity for the “Gift of Caring” cookie. We have donated to our local military group, the fire department, soup kitchens and Home Safe Home.  We make it a contest between the booth locations to see who could get the most donations. This way the girls always remember to ask when they are selling.

Make a Day of Girl Scout Cookie Selling

After council has contacted local businesses for booth location, we contact additional sites like local corner stores and dairy queen. We find about four different places and have what we call a Marathon Cookie sale. The booths are run from about 11 to 5, rotating girls in and out during the day.  Several leaders that stay all day to help run them. Two of these booths are always set up as a Drive Thru, we put up orange cones and enter and exit signs, the girls are not allowed to approach a car without a adult with them to remain safe.   We always contact and get approval from the local business so we will be able to use their rest rooms for the day.

One thing we do on marathon day is to have two leaders designated as runners. If a booth gets low on cases, they call for a runner to drop off more cases.  We have a sign out sheet so we can keep track of how many cookies are at each booth and how much money each booth will have when we close them down.   We start and end each booth at a different time so runners can close them out. During the sale, runners pick up money so we don’t have a lot of  at each site for safety.

Decorating Your Booth

The girls make poster boards signs to hold up that say Buy Girl Scout Cookies.  Our council always lends out cookie costumes for the girls to rotate between them. Sometimes we have  themes to make it more interesting. One of groups made their booth look tropical, while another group made their booth red, white and blue, the booths also stack up cookie cases this is a good look plus a good wind block.

Few of our Past Booth Designs

Be Safe with Money

We are collecting a lot of money during day. For safety reasons, we try have a car near the booth where an adult and girl  will be making change. If you are in a outside area where it is not possible to have a car parked, keep your money behind you covered up and out of site with an adult nearby. Unfortunately, there have been many incidents where girl scouts cookie money has been stolen.

Selling ideas

Have the girls hold up cookies to show people as they walk by, or have a few cookies broken up on a tray for samples.   We bought the girls pom pom’s so they could shake them around; this is really great to help young scouts not to get bored.  We use them from year to year.

If you are in a large parking lot and allowed to put up a canopy and place large cardboard box with sign stating it was a drive through.

The booths put up pictures of activities they had done, plus a sign stating what the goal was for the troop.  Our troop goal is always the same; sell enough cookies to receive a cookie shirt for each member of the troop.  With 40 girls that is a lot of cookies to sell, our first order is always that amount of cookies. The job of each person in the troop is to sell all of them. I realize this is a gamble but this is the choice of the troop because they want the shirts.  We have several booth sales to make it and we have a great group of parents and leaders to accomplish this. Last year we sold over 8000 boxes.

Let your girls have some fun coming up with ideas to decorate their cookie booth to attract more attention! Booth sales are more fun for girls when they get to be creative and help set up an eye popping booth. This We Blinged Our Cookie Booth fun patch will help them remember the fun they had getting their booth ready.

I am a leader just like all of you. My name is Jodi Carlson and I have been in Girl Scouts for 24 years. First as a Girl Scout for 12 years with my mom as my leader and then after graduation I came back and continued as a leader, with my mom and 10 others. We have a multi-level troop of 40 girls ranging in age from 6 years to 18 years. I have many stories, ideas, games, and songs that I have used over the years and want to now pay it forward to leaders everywhere.