With the door-to-door sales model proving questionable at best amid widespread contagion concerns, Girl Scouts are once again taking a hybrid approach to cookie sales — this time with a new digital ordering partner.
On Tuesday (Jan. 11), food delivery service DoorDash announced that it was partnering with the organization to sell Girl Scout Cookies through its digital marketplace. This month, consumers in select areas can order their cookies online for delivery or for pickup at in-person cookie booths, with the partnership extending to additional areas in February.
“I am so excited to welcome Girl Scouts of the USA to our platform, providing a fast and convenient option for customers to access beloved Girl Scout Cookies on-demand, while empowering Girl Scouts to meaningfully grow their cookie businesses,” Shanna Prevé, DoorDash’s vice president of strategic partnerships and business development, said in a statement.
“Through this collaboration, we aim to provide access and opportunity for Girl Scouts, while providing their neighborhoods with safe, efficient and enjoyable ways to support their local troops,” Prevé continued.
If DoorDash is taking a commission of these sales, then the value of this partnership goes beyond just providing good publicity for DoorDash — it is a significant financial opportunity.
According to a document on the Girl Scouts site, around 200 million boxes of cookies are sold each year. At the 2021 price of $5-$6 per box, that volume brings in a minimum of $1 billion. If DoorDash took a commission at the lowest end of its typical 15-30% range, the deal would still offer a $150 million opportunity.
For Girl Scouts, the partnership grows the number of potential customers. After all, the ability to order online through a familiar platform such as DoorDash could be the difference between buying those Thin Mints — and not — for a significant portion of consumers.
Research from the December 2021 edition of PYMNTS’ Digital Divide series, created in collaboration with Paytronix, which surveyed more than 2,500 United States adults about their ordering habits, found that 42% of consumers had used at least one aggregator in the previous 18 months.
Additionally, the study revealed that DoorDash is the most popular choice among aggregator users. Fifty-four percent of those who had ordered from at least one used DoorDash, compared to the 52% that had used runner-up Uber Eats and the significantly lower 38% that used the third most popular service, Grubhub.
In fact, Girl Scouts partnered with the third-choice delivery marketplace last year, offering pickup and delivery through Grubhub. Now, DoorDash is the organization’s exclusive delivery partner.
“Our collaboration with Grubhub was for the 2021 season. Given Girl Scouts presence in nearly every US zip code and our continued need to find innovative ways to prioritize safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, we chose to partner with DoorDash for the 2022 Girl Scout Cookie season,” a GSUSA spokesperson commented in an email to PYMNTS. “As the nation’s largest on-demand delivery service platform, we hope to empower Girl Scouts nationwide to grow their cookie businesses by offering their customers their favorite treats delivered same day to their doorstep.”
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One possible reason for the shift could be the program’s underperformance last year. The Associated Press reported back in June that the organization had 15 million boxes of unsold cookies.
“This is unfortunate, but given this is a girl-driven program and the majority of cookies are sold in-person, it was to be expected,” Kelly Parisi, a spokesperson for Girl Scouts of the USA, told the outlet at the time.
