GPS app helps find Girl Scout cookies for sale

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

The West Chesterfield Girl Scouts’ troop on Chicago’s South Side is counting on a new GPS-tracking “app” to tell cookie fans where they are selling cookies at booths, boosting their two-year-long effort to raise enough money to visit Washington, D.C.

The “Cookie Locator” app, which uses the global positioning satellite technology to pinpoint locations, is free to download on iPhone and Android mobile devices.

The West Chesterfield troop, which meets at 9351 S. Michigan Ave., did their biggest sales at their booth setups last year, selling 8,500 boxes of Girl Scout cookies at the Dominick’s grocery store in the South Loop and at Sam’s Club in south suburban Lansing, said Sheryl Carter, leader of the troop’s Daisies, Brownies and Juniors.

Abrianna Carter, 14, a Girl Scout troop member who attends the Air Force Academy, says the “Cookie Locator” app will make it easier for cookie fans to find sales sites, given that customers can get easily confused when they hunt for the sites on the Web or via telephone messages.

Girl Scouts nationwide set up cookie-sales booths each year to sell cookies in local drugstores, supermarkets and discount sto res. The Cookie Booths remain open until March 20 this year.

Here’s how the booth-locator app works: Call **GScookies from a cell phone to get a text message that lets you download the Cookie Locator app. T ype your ZIP code, and the app identifies the closest cookie booth and the hours that the booths are staffed.

Maria Wynne, CEO of the Girl S couts of GreaterChicago and Northwest Indiana, said thi s is the first year that the organization incorporated social media for the popular cookie sales.

Though some Girl Scouts previously set up their own Facebook pages or created YouTube videos to boost their cookie sales, the Girl Scouts wanted to make sure that they set up social-media tools that supported their mission of helping girls set g oals, make decisions, manage money, interact with customers and gain a sense of proper business ethics, said Wynne, who leads the world ¹s largest Girl Scouts Council. The Chicago-area council comprises 86,000 Girl Scouts and 22,000 volunteers in 245 communities.

A key element of the social media toolkit is a “Cookie Club,” where the girls log in to a secure website, send e-cards and ask for customers’ promises to buy cookies. The girls send friends, family and other customers an email containing a link to an order form. The recipient fills out the form online. The form automatically returns to the Girl Scout who sent it, and she promises to follow up with the order. The girls arrange delivery and payment for the orders the old-fashioned way — face-to-face.

The Scouts also keep an internal online list of thei r sales goals, the troop’s goals, their progress and how they intend to manage the money.

“The Cookie Club teaches the girls how to get organized online and how to set up a business onl ine,” Wynne said. “They begin to get a sense of operating a business, a nd that is the entrepreneurship aspect of the cookie sales that we encou rage. We’ve allowed the girls to think about their goals in a bigger way because the web allows them a larger reach.”

Carter, whose younger sister, Aryel, 10, is a junior Girl Scout in the West Chesterfield troop, said she is enjoying using the Cookie Club because it helps her stay organized as she aims to sell 500 boxes of cookies.

Michelle Collier, a 10-year-old 4th grader at Nettelhorst School in the city’s Lakeview neighborhood, said she liked being able to email a family friend in Los Angeles to ask for a cookie order. The friend returned his “e-promise,” listing the kinds of cookies and numbers of boxes he wanted.

“It gives us an advantage connecting to other people,” Collier said of the online ordering process. Collier is aiming to sell 500 boxes of cookies, and she is using the Cookie Club, which shows the percentage of boxes sold in relationship to the goal, to track her progress.

“If I become a business manager, using the Cookie Club will have helped me understand sales and business concepts,” Collier said.

Emma Quasny, a 9-year-old fourth grader at Nettelhorst, aims to sell 200 boxes, and said the Cookie Club makes it easier to see how far she still has to reach her goal with the online tools.

Collier’s mom, Carol, oversees the troop’s cookie sales, and Emma’s mom, is a troop leader.

The eight Gi rl Scout cookies, which contain no trans fat, are Do-Si-Dos, Dulce de Lec he, Lemon Chalet Cremes, Samoas, Tagalongs, Thank U Berry Much, Thin Mints and Trefoils. They cost $4 a box.

The Girl Scouts join 5.8 million small businesses that will use social media as a promotion for the first time this year, according to market research.

A Chicag o-based startup is helping such businesses get an in-depth look at their customers in real ti me by finding out what their customers are saying about them and how to best respond to the commen ts.

Sprout Social, one of 10 startups given seed money by Groupon inve stors Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky, sells businesses a single web-base d dashboard from which to monitor mentions on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp , LinkedIn, Gowalla and Foursquare. So if someone writes a restaurant r eview on Yelp, Sprout Social alerts the restaurant, provides the rev iewer’s identity and how to reach him or her, and advises on how to engage t hat customer to do more business.

Small businesses could send the customer a rewa rd or a deal tweet, for example.

“Consumers expect businesses to be ‘lis tening’ on Twitter and Facebook, and they expect a response,” said Justyn (CQ) Howard, CEO and founder of Sprout Social, which h as raised $1.35 million in investment capital.

Howard, who previously worked in training-software sales, started the company 18 months ago to help small businesses manage and monitor relevant social media.

So far, Sprout Social’s competition includes Postling and Sendable, as well as the many websites that businesses check each day to monitor customer chatter.

The next step is the subject on weblog speculation, and mirrors the Girl Scout’s GPS-sales idea: Experts believe that Sprou t Social could partner with Groupon to enable local merchants to identify nearby customers to offer them targeted deals.