LIHU‘E — The 2021 edition of Girl Scouts cookies arrived Thursday, and deliveries to the participating Girl Scout troops were completed at the Kaua‘i Veterans Center.
“It feels like I just got rid of the last of the cookies yesterday,” Angela Hoover, the Kaua‘i Girl Scouts of Hawai‘i coordinator told a troop leader of GS Troop 174, Hanalei, who arrived to pick up her troop’s order.
“Now it’s Girl Scout Cookie time all over again.”
Impacted by the global pandemic, cookie supplies are diminished this year.
“They used to use the entire Vet Center for distribution,” said Aida Cruz of the Kaua‘i Veterans Center. “Today they only have half of the place. We can set up for another event.”
Hoover said this year’s order for the eight available flavors totaled 1,100 cases (each case contains a dozen boxes). Last year’s order totaled about 5,000 cases, or 60,000 boxes of the available flavors.
“Not all of the Girl Scout troops are participating in the Girl Scout Cookie sales,” said Hoover. “One of the troops that used to be one of the biggest cookie movers is not doing it this year.”
The COVID-19 influence filters down to the individual troops, as Leader Korin Dunford of Troop 174 said they will not be participating in booth sales to minimize contact between people and the individual scouts.
The decision to opt out of booth sales and restrict sales to online and in-person only dropped the number of cases required as Dunford loaded up just 91 cases of
assorted flavors, a decrease from the 3,000 cases they ordered in 2020.
The key to Girl Scout cookie sales this year is gshawaii.org/cookies, the Girl Scout Hawai‘i website.
“It’s pretty easy to use,” Hoover said. “You enter your ZIP code and a map appears that shows who and where GS cookies are being sold for that ZIP-code location. It eliminates a lot of the health concerns for the scouts by eliminating contact and money-handling.”
The website also indicates what booth-sale locations are working, because not all of the sites are fully staffed, Hoover said.
“The Girls Scout office on Rice Street, for sure” has cookies, Hoover said. “This is the first weekend of sales, and usually this is one of the busiest weekends of the season that runs through March 28, or when flavors are exhausted. The Girl Scout office is also a GrubHub pickup site. We’ll start at 5 p.m. Friday.”
Booth sites committed to open today from 5 p.m.include the Wailua Shopping Center and Sueoka Store in Koloa.
Flavor offerings for 2021 include Lemon-ups, Trefoils, Do-Si-Dos, Samoas, Tagalongs, Thin Mints, Girl Scout S’mores and Toffee-tastic. Prices are $5 a box, with the exception of Girl Scout S’mores and Toffee-tastic, which are $6 a box.
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Dennis Fujimoto, reporter, can be reached at 245-0453 or dfujimoto@thegardenisland.com.
