On the job less than a year as chief executive officer of the local Girl Scouts, she turned a half-baked idea into a handy tool to help the scouts and their customers:

The online Cookie Booth Locator.

Hungry for some Peanut Butter Patties today? Go to www.gsep.org, click on the big Thin Mint, type in your zip code, click on "sort by date," hit "go," and, presto, a list of places appears where your friendly neighborhood Girl Scouts have packages ready to go.

Yesterday was the first day that Caramel deLites and Cinna-Spins could officially be purchased - at $3.50 a box - from the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania.

It was also the official launch of its synergistic strategy to woo cookie lovers.

Last May, Meredith took the reins of the new council, formed from three groups that served Philadelphia, a suburban ring, and counties to the north.

She reexamined strategies, learning from marketing mavens that most would-be buyers never get the chance to buy.

"The model of girls' selling door-to-door doesn't work everywhere for a wide variety of reasons," she said. " . . . It's a fact of life that some girls and their families feel safer selling cookies at our cookie booths."

How, then, to get more folks to those booths?

She challenged the council's cookie company, which also markets the treats online, to create a zip code-searching system.

"We thought it was a great idea, so we helped bring it to life," said Mary Alice Callaway, senior director of marketing for Virginia-based ABC Bakers.

It and Little Brownie Bakers - which uses some different names, such as Samoas and Tagalongs - make the nation's Girl Scout Cookies.

Meredith went further, cutting out confusion by declaring February to be Girl Scout Cookie Month in Eastern Pennsylvania.

"Just not needing a decoder ring to know when Girl Scout Cookies are on sale, we think, is a big leap forward," she said.

Ads are on the sides of Stroehmann bread trucks all month, on billboards in both English and Spanish, and on radio and the Web.

The paid advertising is also a local first, she said.

The central message: Go to the Web site and use the Cookie Booth Locator.

It's too early to tell how quickly the public is catching on, said Meredith and Callaway.

But the idea already has.

ABC Bakers created a pilot project to test the tool with about 20 Girl Scout councils nationwide.

In a way, it's history repeating itself - an area sweet idea going national.

Back in the 1930s, Philadelphia had the first council-wide sale that used professional baking and packaging. By the end of that decade, the Girl Scouts had adopted the initiative nationally - and ABC Bakers began.

"I think it might be up and running probably next week," said Natasha Southerland, spokeswoman for the the Central and Southern New Jersey council, whose direct sales began Jan. 21 and continue through the month.

Before the locator shows up on the group's Web site, www.gscsnj.org, visitors may click "feedback" and request to be notified about sales, Southerland said.

For other areas, try a national locator at http://www.girlscoutcookies.org. Instead of searching sales, though, it tells the name of the nearest council and how to get in touch.