"Buy Popcorn, Support Sea Scouts!"

by Caitlín

This morning a handful of Scouts and adults unloaded a lot of popcorn and set up in front of the Woodbridge Wal-Mart. We hoped to get all the stuff off our hands so we wouldn't have to re-load it and no one would have to have it take up space in their house.

At first we were all sort of shy about going up to people and asking them to buy popcorn, but after fifteen minutes or half an hour, we got bored and tired of people hardly looking at us and decided it was time to get down to work.

"Excuse me, ma'am, would you like to support Sea Scouting today?" we asked, handing them fliers that listed the different kinds of popcorn and information about ordering online.

Still, most people shied away or muttered "no thanks" as they passed, heads down and not meeting our eyes. It was discouraging when after an hour of advertising we had yet to sell anything.
Part of the problem might have been that the Salvation Army and the VFW (our sponsor) happened to be there, also taking donations, so people had already given by the time they got to us. Also, as David pointed out, people are probably "Scouted out" by now because popcorn sales have been going on all summer.

We got into a real popcorn-selling frenzy for a while, giving away fliers right and left (Daniel got the award for most fliers handed out) and calling out to people to "Buy popcorn, support Sea Scouts!" But it got to be lunch time and we were all hungry and getting tired of standing around and saying the same things over and over again.

David arrived as a reinforcement, and his little sisters really got into advertising. They fought over who got to hold which sign and wear the corn hat, and the two of them (in the first photo) attracted a lot more attention with the signs than our display did.

One gentleman who used to be a Boy Scout bought a tin and said his tour bus company would give us discounts, so if we ever need to go on long trip....
Another couple walked up and said, "How much popcorn can we get for $100?"
"You can get a lot of popcorn," David replied. They ended up buying $98 worth of popcorn and trail mix, our largest purchase by far, and probably the largest we'll ever have.

In total we made $280.00, which is really good, and much better than our first attempt to sell popcorn at the Occoquan Arts & Crafts Show, but at 2:59 p.m. we had a second-by-second countdown until it was time to start packing up.

There is still popcorn left, but not huge amounts like before. Maybe we can sell the rest of it in one more day of fundraising.