Officials with the Girl Scouts of Greater Iowa (GSGI) say persons wanting to order and receive a wide variety of Girl Scout cookies won’t have to wait much longer, especially with the advent of a new ordering system. According to the GSGI, from the very first day of the program, girls will have packages of cookies ON HAND to sell door to door, at Cookie Booths, and to family and friends. Girl scouts will exchange cookies and payments in one easy step! No more taking orders, waiting weeks, and then returning for the delivery and collecting money.  The “Cookies Now!” program condenses all that work into one simple step. The Cookie Program will run January 13^th through March 4^th, 2012, in both Iowa and Nebraska.

In years past, the Scouts took orders, ordered the cookies from the supplier, then handed out cookies and collected payment about three to five weeks later. Officials say since the Girl Scouts, along with their parents and troop leaders, develop their sales plans, the direct sales also allow the girls to cultivate skills they can use: goal-setting, decision-making, money management, people skills and business ethics. They will have to decide whether to go door-to-door or set up cookie booths at public locations such as grocery stores. They will have to keep track of their sales and the money collected.