San Francisco Girl Scouts Getting Crushed by Cookie Sales Competition from DoorDash

[Rasulis]

Something less earth shattering.

San Francisco Girl Scouts Getting Crushed by Cookie Sales Competition from DoorDash

After missing out on in-person sales in 2021 due to the pandemic, many Girl Scouts were eagerly looking forward to ramping their cookie peddling back up this year, but found themselves dealing with new struggles from supply chain-related shortages and competition from older Scouts who were delivering cookies using the DoorDash app and dominating local cookie supplies.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a labor shortage at a bakery that makes the Scouts’ famous boxed treats left area girls “scrambling to find cookies earlier this month.”

Scouts sell the cookies to raise money for trips and projects for their troop, and there are badges and prizes awarded for top sellers. Many Scouts work hard to sell as many cookies as possible, reaching out to their neighbors, parents’ friends and coworkers, and setting up those ubiquitous tables seen outside grocery stores this time of year. Cookie sales are the main, if not only, fundraiser for most troops.

Liz Johannesen told the paper that her third-grade daughter had sold out of her entire supply within weeks and was unable to get any more. They were frustrated to then discover that every single cookie variety was available to order on DoorDash.

DoorDash, the Chronicle reported, launched a new partnership with the Girl Scouts for this year’s sales, “[b]ut not all girls were given the chance to participate.” The company itself limited the program to Scouts in the fourth grade and up, and some troop leaders further restricted participation to older Scouts.

Economic divisions seemed to play a role as well, with DoorDash requiring those selling Girl Scout cookies through their app to be able to guarantee a certain amount of inventory — hundreds of dollars of cookies that a family might be stuck buying themselves if they were unable to sell them all.

A DoorDash spokesperson told the Chronicle that only 1% of local Scouts were selling cookies via the app, and that the company had partially waived its usual fees for the cookie deliveries to support the Scouts.

The whole situation felt like “a perfect microcosm of the Silicon Valley ethos,” said Johannesen, with a small percentage of Scouts who had greater financial means and access to the technology being able to crowd other Scouts out of the market.

The supply chain problems and the DoorDash issues were unrelated, but Johannesen was far from the only parent who expressed frustration and suspicion.

Alex Kao’s eighth-grade daughter is a Scout and he had volunteered as her troop’s “cookie coordinator” for the past six years. Kao told the Chronicle that he had never seen the local “cookie cupboards” — the stockpiles of crates of cookies stored in volunteers’ garages and sheds — with such low or even empty inventories. He described Scouts “standing outside a Safeway with no cookies and they look sad.”

Kate Foster has two daughters, ages 6 and 8, who are both Scouts selling cookies the “old-fashioned way” in person, and she said they were going to fall too short of their goals to get the coveted patch for cookie sales to sew on their uniforms. It was tough to watch, she said, acknowledging that it was “tricky” to balance technological advances and still “making it fair for all Girl Scouts.”

Kao’s concerns about DoorDash’s interference were somewhat assuaged by learning that it wasn’t the corporation directly selling the cookies, but other Scouts who were partnering with the app, but he still thought it was creating an “equal access” problem.

The app’s same-day $3.99 delivery fee also undercut the Scouts’ $12.99 delivery fee for online orders, and while the Scouts’ website allows orders nationwide, shipping can take up to 15 days. Johannesen emailed the Girl Scouts and suggested that next year the app should limit its delivery radius so that one seller can’t cannibalize cookie sales from girls in neighboring towns.

I am not sure if I should laugh or cry. Damn DoorDash.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Something less earth shattering.

San Francisco Girl Scouts Getting Crushed by Cookie Sales Competition from DoorDash



I am not sure if I should laugh or cry. Damn DoorDash.

Clickbait headline.

Doordash is not crushing Girl Scouts on Cookie Sales.

Girl Scouts are Crushing other Girls Scouts on Cookie Sales by using DoorDash.

There's certainly things to be discussed regarding Doordash's involvement at all though. But that's more a discussion about Capitalism in general. This is the "Free Market" at work.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Yes and no, not every troop had a chance to use door dash. So certain troops in one area get the door dash business and the others are sol. It’s kinda dumb. The door dash sales should benefit any troops in the area covered.

Which is covered under "There's certainly things to be discussed regarding Doordash's involvement."

I'm just saying the article presents the title in a way to say that Doordash was "muscling in" on Girl Scouts territory...when the actuality is that other Girl Scouts are using DoorDash to do the muscling in.

[Edge-]

Great that we can teach young girls life lessons about privilege and inequality at a young age.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Great that we can teach young girls life lessons about privilege and inequality at a young age.

Personally I like how the "Fuck you... I got mine" spirit of this is completely antithetical to the stated principles of the Girl Scouts.

[Edge-]

Personally I like how the "Fuck you... I got mine" spirit of this is completely antithetical to the stated principles of the Girl Scouts.

It's that way in both scouting organizations, and that more comes from the troop leadership/parents competing with each other and shit. Happened in the scout troop I was in, and even the freakin cub scout troop when we'd do pinewood derbies and shit.

Both organizations are simultaneously fantastic and truly horrid at the same time.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

It's that way in both scouting organizations, and that more comes from the troop leadership/parents competing with each other and shit. Happened in the scout troop I was in, and even the freakin cub scout troop when we'd do pinewood derbies and shit.

Both organizations are simultaneously fantastic and truly horrid at the same time.

Makes sense...and also possibly provides an answer to one of the questions I had which was "How did these kids come up with this plan?"... and the possible answer is "They didn't...their parents put them up to it"

[Endus]

Personally I like how the "Fuck you... I got mine" spirit of this is completely antithetical to the stated principles of the Girl Scouts.

That's integral to any kind of competition, and Girl Scouts turns cookie sales into a competition, with prizes for top sellers. Here's the 2021 list; https://www.girlscouts.org/content/d...DC2016-167.pdf

Can't really argue that it's "antithetical to the stated principles" when it's an integral part of how they get their Scouts to sell cookies in the first place.

It's just the latest evolution of being "smart enough" to set up a position outside a grocery store, or (increasingly lately) a weed dispensary, rather than relying exclusively on your parents word-of-mouth at work and going door-to-door through your neighbourhood.

- - - Updated - - -

It's that way in both scouting organizations, and that more comes from the troop leadership/parents competing with each other and shit. Happened in the scout troop I was in, and even the freakin cub scout troop when we'd do pinewood derbies and shit.

Both organizations are simultaneously fantastic and truly horrid at the same time.

Scouting was pretty integral to my upbringing, both from earning my way up through Chief Scout's Award (Canadian equivalent to Eagle Scout in the USA; they're different organizations), to my leaving Scouting in protest when they lacked the gonads to just require troops to accept Scouts of any gender (it had been Boy Scouts for forever, and this was right at the point where that was changing). They left it up to the troops to decide, and my troop voted "nay", and I quit that same night.

Both were meaningful and important points in my growing up years that contributed to me becoming the man I am today. The organization eventually went genderless officially, and I've been a leader for a bit since. But yeah; anyone thinking there isn't weird-ass shit going on hasn't ever been part of Scouting.

[Edge-]

Makes sense...and also possibly provides an answer to one of the questions I had which was "How did these kids come up with this plan?"... and the possible answer is "They didn't...their parents put them up to it"

Plus the limitations put in place by the partnership between the Girl Scouts and Uber.

It's like when they set up their tables outside of pot shops in states where they'd just legalized weed. Don't hate the player, hate the fact that this is a competention with inherently unequal footing for the girls.

As I said, a great early firsthand lesson in privilege and inequality for them.

[Lynarii]

I don't think that we can even really blame DoorDash for it being unequal. It's not like this is an official partnership with the Scouts, so they probably didn't have a defined national plan in place for it. And I'd wager a lot of the reason there is a limitation that only allows the older girls to do it is because they REALLY don't want to run afoul of child labor laws or laws involving who they can legally enter into a contract with.

Most of this is just a product of how the scouts have monetized children and pressure them into selling cookies. It was always dubiously ethical at BEST, and this is just highlighting some of the reasons why.

[Rasulis]

I like the last paragraph.

The app’s same-day $3.99 delivery fee also undercut the Scouts’ $12.99 delivery fee for online orders, and while the Scouts’ website allows orders nationwide, shipping can take up to 15 days. Johannesen emailed the Girl Scouts and suggested that next year the app should limit its delivery radius so that one seller can’t cannibalize cookie sales from girls in neighboring towns.

[GreenJesus]

I like the last paragraph.

$13 delivery fee in 2022? Oof. No wonder door dash cut into their business. That's just robbery.

[Edge-]

$13 delivery fee in 2022? Oof. No wonder door dash cut into their business. That's just robbery.

Or, that's a more appropriate delivery charge and the artificially low delivery charges are either eaten by the company (Amazon) or subsidized by investors while the company is building itself. Personal delivery ain't cheap, yo.

[Poopymonster]

Great that we can teach young girls life lessons about privilege and inequality at a young age.

And Capitalism!

[Endus]

And Capitalism!

But you're just repeating what Edge- said.

[Al Gorefiend]

This article reads like an article from 1995.

"Mom & Pop business crushed by arrival of internet shopping"

[Endus]

This article reads like an article from 1995.

"Mom & Pop business crushed by arrival of internet shopping"

Realistically, more like "child laborers exploited through a loophole in labor laws by an unscrupulous cookie manufacturer find out that their exploitation isn't even internally fair, let alone externally".

People keep ignoring how fuckin' weird it is for kids to be used as marketing agents for cookie sales by a big company. Speaking as someone who grew up in Scouting and also had to sell magazines and shit for my school, as a kid.

[Biglog]

Traditional door-to-door and in-person cookie sales understandably are way way down the last couple of years because of Covid. Kids weren't going door to door nearly as much, many people wouldn't even answer with the pandemic going on, and most offices were/are working remote so parents selling in the office which is normally a big part of sales also couldn't happen. So sales are way down in the rest of the country which is their primary fundraiser.

As for DoorDash, it was girl scout kids selling on DoorDash and getting the sales so that doesn't really seem to be an issue. It helps get them over the obstacle of Covid for sales by putting them in contact with willing buyers. If anything our youth need MORE exposure to things like cookie sales, Junior Achievement, integrating with online sales, etc. Giving kids some exposure to how modern business works is a good thing. It can often be a cold splash of water in the face getting rejected when trying to sell anything. Being an entrepreneur or business owner as an adult is really tough, and preparing youth to be persistent and overcome setbacks is an important trait that things like cookie sales or JA teach firsthand. That should really be the takeaway, not that DoorDash is trying to exploit girl scouts.

Plus as for the "competition", selling girl scout cookies is one of those things like Science Fairs where often overly ambitious parents do 99% of the work to ensure that their kid "wins". I've actually seen parents buy thousands of dollars worth of cookies or popcorn themselves just in order to "win" their troop's sales contest, it's wild.

[Rozz]

I wish we had that here. I want my fucking lemonades!!!

[Ghost of Cow]

It's that way in both scouting organizations, and that more comes from the troop leadership/parents competing with each other and shit. Happened in the scout troop I was in, and even the freakin cub scout troop when we'd do pinewood derbies and shit.

Both organizations are simultaneously fantastic and truly horrid at the same time.

Yep.

I became disillusioned with scouting at an early age (8, iirc) when I realized that it was really just the parents doing everything to compete with each other. Given that my parents weren't around to do such things, it felt really awkward to bring my sad looking little cake that I made on my own when the other kids were somehow bringing cakes that looked like they were straight out of a Cake Boss episode or something.