SALISBURY — Beginning this Saturday thousands of local Girl Scouts will knock on doors and contact customers via digital marketing.

Girl Scouts of the Chesapeake Bay will offer eight cookie varieties, including two new varieties, Rah-Rah Raisin made with whole grain oats, raisins and Greek yogurt chunks, and Toffee-tastic gluten-free cookies with toffee bits and a rich, buttery cookies taste. Toffee-tastic will be available in limited amounts. Returning cookies are perennial favorite Thin Mints, Samoas, Do-si-dos, Tagalongs, Trefoils and Savannah Smiles.

Digital Cookie follows Girl Scouts’ classic “hands on” approach to teaching girls new skills. Through the platform, local Girl Scouts will maintain their own protected, personalized websites to market their cookie business to local consumers, accept orders via credit card, and activate cookie shipments directly to customers. Girl Scouts participating in Digital Cookie will send invitations to selected customers to visit their cookie websites and make purchases. The platform places an emphasis on the safety of girls and customers alike and offers an online experience that allows girls to learn about digital money management using dashboards to track their sales and goals. Overall, the new platform teaches modern skills while aligning with the interests of today’s girls.

The Digital Cookie platform enhances and expands the program’s ability to teach girls new business skills for business. The platform expands the iconic cookie program by adding a digital layer, strengthening the 5 Skills girls learn in the traditional cookie program, including goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics. Digital Cookie introduces vital 21st century lessons about online marketing, application use and e-commerce to Girl Scouts.

Digital cookie does not replace the traditional program, however. In addition to this week’s door-to-door sales, cookie booth sales begin on Feb. 13, at local businesses throughout the Delmarva Peninsula. And, for the 12th year, girls will take donations of Girl Scout cookies for Operation Taste of Home and local community groups. Operation Taste of Home cookies are donated to our Armed Forces and local agencies, such as food banks and pantries, blood banks, cancer centers and youth programs.

Individuals interested in purchasing cookies or donating to Operation Taste of Home can call the Cookie Hotline at 1-800-YUM-YUM2. To locate a cookie booth sale in your area go to www.girlscoutcookies.org. Girl Scout Cookies are $4.00 per box, except for Toffee-tastic at $5.00 per box.

All of the proceeds from a local council’s cookie activities remain in the area where the cookies are sold. This revenue is used to benefit girls, some of it directly by remaining in the Girl Scout troop treasuries, and some of it indirectly by funding council-led programs for Girl Scouts. Each year, more than 9,000 Girl Scouts from the Delmarva Peninsula participate in the cookie program, selling more than one million boxes of cookies.

A leading advocate for and expert on girls, Girl Scouts of the Chesapeake Bay builds girls of courage, confidence and character by providing personal leadership development and programs that teach skills for the real world. To learn more about Girl Scouts of the Chesapeake Bay, visit www.GSCB.org or call 1-800-341-4007 or 1-800-374-9811.