Cookie lovers will be able to get their hands on the Girl Guide favourites in a whole new way this year.
Sylvan Lake’s Canadian Tire has hundreds of boxes of cookies waiting to be sold on behalf of the Girl Guides who are momentarily suspended due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Paul Ventura, owner of Sylvan Lake’s Canadian Tire, said the idea came from the owner of the Leduc store.
“He sent an email down and said this is what he was doing and I said ‘I think it’s a fantastic idea’ and jumped on the bandwagon,” said Ventura. “We love giving back to the community and help out and with what’s going on right now these poor Girl Guides are getting all these cookies delivered in and they can’t go door-to-door.”
Store Manager Liz Lewis says the whole deal was made within an hour of contacting Jess Potuer, Kuusamo District commissioner.
The Girl Guides of the Kuusamo District come from Sylvan Lake, Bentley and Eckville.
Potuer said getting the call from Lewis earlier this week was quite a surprise, but she is thankful for it.
“Usually our Girl Guide cookies it’s the girls who sell them and so we never sell in stores that’s just not something that we do,” said Potuer in a phone interview. “It’s never something we would’ve even considered doing we just figured we’d sit on these cookies and see what happens and hopefully sometime soon we can sell them.”
For this campaign the district ordered 454 cases of cookies with the first 300 boxes being ready to buy at Canadian Tire.
The cookies serve as the Girl Guides’ big fundraiser and the money filters through the local, provincial and national level to keep the program running as well as pay for all the activities they do, such as camps.
“This could have been catastrophic for them if they didn’t have some kind of avenue,” said Lewis. “The shame of it is that the kids that’s so part of it I feel bad for them too because they don’t get to do what they love best [selling cookies].”
“It’s not the same, we can’t change that, but we can change that we’ll raise money for them.”
Ventura wrote the chapter a cheque for all the cookies currently in the store with the hopes of being able to buy more and sell them all. The store is selling the cookies at cost through their tills and are not making a profit.
The cookies will be for sale until they run out, which he is hoping is sooner than later.
“Maybe we’ll see people with massive carts of cookies, not toilet paper,” joked Lewis.
“I would rather have people hoard Girl Guide cookies,” added Ventura, “let’s hoard Girl Guide cookies instead.”
Both styles of Girl Guide cookies are for sale at the Sylvan Lake Canadian Tire for $5 a box.