A tour of Mackinac Island may be off the table, but for Girl Scouts River Valleys Troop 16730 of St. Paul, COVID-19 was just a speed bump on the Amtrak to Seattle.
To get to the Northwest, the troop members faced challenges such as how to incapacitate an attacker in a library conference room or sell 1,400 boxes of Girl Scout cookies in a single weekend.
For troop member Bailey Beedle, a Girl Scout cookie power seller, her scouting journey started with a crash course in business-to-business sales at the cusp of middle school. After years of being unable to join a troop because of her lengthy commute home, Bailey finally got the chance she’d been pining for in the fifth grade when her family moved into an 1890s house they had painstakingly renovated on St. Paul’s West Side.
Bailey, a late recruit by scouting standards, was determined to make up for lost time.
COOKIES AND BEER
Armed with a little blue wagon full of cookie boxes, she wheeled down the hill from home to the Wabasha Brewing Co. and made a business-to-business sales pitch to fill flights and melt hearts.
“Would you be willing to try a sampling of our cookies, and see if any of them would pair well with your flights of beer?” she recalled saying. “And on the day you were selling your flight of beer with a cookie, could we come station outside with our wagon?”
The beer-flight-and-Girl-Scout-cookie pairing practically sold itself. Bailey unloaded 1,200 cookie boxes that season, surpassing anyone in her new troop, and opening the girls’ eyes to the world of “B-to-B” sales.
“My troop wanted to keep going, because they wanted to keep up with that, and they were only selling a few hundred boxes each,” Bailey said.
NO LONGER TWEENS
Fast-forward four years, and the young ladies of Girl Scouts River Valleys Troop 16730 are no longer tweens. Most of them attend Highland Park Senior High School, and the troop — which had once had 14 members — has now dwindled to five determined freshmen.
“When we got to seventh grade, we ended up losing quite a few troop members, because they joined other afterschool activities and they just got too busy with their schedules,” Bailey said.
Sales have changed, too.
“It’s way more difficult to sell. We are not cute little kids,” Bailey said. “We have to work more, and use our business and marketing strategies. As we get older, the cookie sales actually get more crucial, because it pays for some of the bigger things we do. For my troop, some of the girls are looking at earning their Gold Award, which is the equivalent of the Boy Scouts’ Eagle Scout award. It takes a lot of time and resources.”
Another change?
COVID. With Bailey leading the way, the troop sold enough cookies in early 2020 to pay for a trip to Mackinac Island on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where two self-described “local moms” host private tours specifically targeted to Girl Scout troops. At profits of 85 to 95 cents per box, the girls had to sell some 1,400 boxes to cover their $1,200 deposit — which they promptly lost during the pandemic.
“They were so excited,” said Bailey’s mother, self-described “cookie mom” Kris Beedle. “And then they were so heartbroken.”
A CANCELED TRIP
In the spring of 2020, the Girl Scouts River Valleys took their cue from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Girl Scouts of the USA and told their troops to cancel group trips.
Troop Mackinaw, the private tour company, allowed them to reschedule once from May 2020 to September 2020, but when fall arrived, scout trips were still off the table.
“It was at the drop of a hat: ‘You’re done selling cookies,’ ” Kris Beedle said. “Their trip for May got canceled, because the CDC kind of locked everybody down at that point. Unfortunately, this company has a ‘no refund’ policy. It’s pretty clear in their policy.”
While it was unfortunate, the group understood, Bailey said.
“We didn’t want anyone to get sick, and we didn’t want to get anyone else sick,” she said. “The more unfortunate part is that they didn’t refund us. We’re not deterred. We’ve become more ambitious, I would say, because now we’re funding a trip to Seattle.”
WEST COAST DREAMING
Come summer, provided they complete enough cookie sales this season, they’ll be heading to the West Coast by Amtrak.
“We had all thought that going on a train would be cool, so we looked at all of the Amtrak routes, and we decided not a ton of us had gone to Seattle, and there were plenty of things we could do in Seattle,” said Bailey, who figured the Space Needle and other Emerald City attractions would be fun to access by public transit. “And then we could fly back.”
First up: Self-defense class.
The girls invited their female family members to join them on Feb. 14 for a lesson in street smarts led by a professional trainer, who showed them how to knock down any ne’er-do-wells who assume freshmen Girl Scouts might be easy prey. The irony of spending the evening of Valentine’s Day in a conference room at Highland Park Library learning how to gouge eyeballs and take out kneecaps wasn’t lost on the small troop.
“It’s actually a big component to getting to Seattle — Girl Scouts are all about safety,” Kris Beedle said. “The girls had to submit a safety plan to get pre-approval to go to Seattle. This shows a dimension of the Girl Scouts that many people don’t even think about. People think ‘arts and crafts.’ … Self-defense right now is a pretty big topic within our city. They’re going to be learning some moves to incapacitate, should it be required.”
COOKIE SALES START SATURDAY
Next up? Cookie sales.
From 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday through Monday, the troop will sell cookies inside Oxendale’s Market, at 374 W. Bernard St. in West St. Paul, with pre-orders available.
Monday is Presidents’ Day, and they’re hoping to take advantage of their day off from school to both make up for their lost cash and fund their West Coast adventure.
From noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, the first day of sales, they’ll host nearly-contactless cookie sales in the drive-through lanes of a former dry cleaning business kitty-corner from Oxendale’s, at 984 S. Smith Ave., targeted to grab-and-go customers who don’t want to leave their cars.
RELATED: Where to buy Girl Scout cookies in 2022
They’ve even solicited a promotional dancer wearing a Thin Mints costume. They’ll also sell donation opportunities — cookie boxes that will be shared with Simpson Housing Services, a Minneapolis-based emergency overnight shelter.
For Bailey, there’s nothing trivial about unloading Samoas, Tagalongs and Do-Si-Dos during a pandemic. It’s been a lesson in strategy and resilience, all the way.
“It’s not only built up my skills as a leader, but it also teaches us how business works,” said Bailey, who said the benefit of being your own boss outweighs the sacrifice. “There are certain things built into society, like wage gaps, and it teaches us, essentially, how to avoid those things that put us back.”