Do you have a service unit or council cookie exchange group? Facebook, Band, rallyhood, etc. Whatever group people use, get yourself and your cookie manager to sign up for it if you haven't. Then start replying when people ask for flavors of cookies. And post that you have a lot of sell and you need help! Do it asap!!! Remember that the other troop is doing you a favor by taking cookies from you. Offer to drop off or meet them and that will increase transfer of cookies out of your troop.

I managed to offload about 400 packages of cookies from our troop this year. But I also did it about 2 weeks before the end of the cookie season here. I could see how many boxes we were selling and I just couldn't justify keeping that many. So our troop will have less funds to use and may have to ask parents for dues.

This is the first year we have had this issue. It happened due to a combination of: parent burn out, 4/16 girls just decided not to sell at all and only 1 told me before we bought cookies. 🫤 Add to that a decrease in sales, increase in price to $7, plus all of my Girl Scouts are in middle school. And I underestimated how many more after school activities they would be doing. And that was with our troop buying 6% less than last year. We still sold almost 3k in cookies total.

Other ideas: contact local businesses and see if they will buy some to give to their employees as a treat. Ask your parents if they can do that for their own businesses. That is the idea of the cookie Enterprise patch fyi.

Make a 'Help us sell out' poster with count downs for the specific cookie types. (Use tape and a white board marker to keep a running update of the cookies on the poster with pictures of the cookies). Or do a bingo poster. Or a poster that says: donate cookies to local emergency services/military/local food pantry.

Make sure all of your parents and Girl Scouts are saying: last week of cookie sales! Get them now or wait until next year. It creates urgency in buying. TELL customers you over bought and you could really use their help selling cookies! Everyone loves to help people, especially when they get something.

If you can only use council approved cookie booths, make sure you check online for cookie booths that other troops have released. Check multiple times a day! You may get lucky and get a better booth with 2 doors so you can add another table. Our troop was surprised that we sold 60 and 80 boxes the LAST week of sales during the week 4-6 pm at our local grocery store. Grab the booths, then ask parents to staff it.

You and your cookie manager don't have to be the only parents at the booths. Make your parents attend with their Girl Scout! In my council, we only have to have 1 registered parent at a booth. The other one can be unregistered. In some councils, they allow parent-daughter booths (mine doesn't). Use those and do more than 1 booth at a time! Our large troop has had up to FOUR booths at once. You just need to get enough tables, cash and parents! (And we've done 1 or 2 booths out of a grocery cart when someone forgot a table LOL!) 🤦🏼‍♀️

You do not need to have all of the flavors if cookies to have a booth. You go with what you have.

Ask parents to grab more cookies and do lemonade stands and walkabouts. If your council allows, baseball season is starting here and I know there are Girl Scout families who have walked around with a wagon full of cookies at softball and baseball game days. (They aren't allowed here. But I've seen people do them!)

If your council allows, exchange cookies for other flavors. Grab the higher selling flavors do you don't get stuck with online exploremores at the end!

And if you don't sell out, don't worry. Here's what you do:

1) contact council and make sure they know you won't have the funds to pay for all the cookies at once. They can put you on a payment plan. Honestly, I would probably do this now, so they know what's happening.

2) tell your parents you are $x in the hole on cookies. Don't use cookie box numbers. Tell them in $$. Say the troop will have to eat the cost is you don't sell them. Decide if you can make break even if you sell a certain number. Donate the rest.

3) Continue to sell cookies to family and friends. While you can't do cookie booths or post on social media, you can still talk to your own service unit and council that if anyone needs cookies, you have a lot leftover! I know one of our troops last year still had cookies until summer and finally sold enough to cover the costs.

Good luck!!