Girl Scout cookies: now fewer and smaller
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It’s cookie season again, and Girl Scouts will have a lighter burden as they stand on doorsteps nationwide this year.
As the cost of baking and transporting the group’s famous sweets shoots through the roof, the Girl Scouts of the USA has decided to package fewer cookies into boxes of Thin Mints, Do-si-dos and Tagalongs and to shrink the Lemon Chalet Creme cookies.
“In order to give the customer the product they’re used to instead of raising the price, this was the only alternative, lowering the weight of the cookies rather than asking the customers to pay more,” said Michelle Tompkins, a Girl Scouts spokeswoman. “I’m sure that in the future, you’ll see more of these changes go into effect.”
Other cookie brands have raised prices, she said. In the last year, the cost of flour has jumped 30%, cocoa rose 20% to 30% and baking oil has soared between 40% and nearly 200%. Transportation expenses are up 30% to 40%.
Girl Scouts traditionally sell the cookies to practice setting goals, managing money and working in teams. Each local council sets its own price, sometimes as high as $4.50 a box, though the nationwide average is $3.50.
In a typical year, the budding businesswomen do $700 million in business, selling 200 million boxes.
“The lessons concerning the impact of the global market is a good one for the girls to learn, especially in these challenging times,” Tompkins said.
This week, the organization was busy batting off suspicions that some of the peanut butter used in its cookies might have come from the supplier involved in the current nationwide Salmonella outbreak.
Both of the licensed bakers affiliated with the Girl Scout cookies, ABC Interbake and Little Brownie Bakers, have said that they do not get their peanut butter from the Peanut Corporation of America, which is being investigated by regulatory agencies.
--Tiffany Hsu
Photo, top: Boxes of cookie goodness. Credit: Girl Scouts of the USA
Photo, bottom: Thin Mint. Credit: ABC Bakers