SCOUTING : Cookie Campaign : About 8,000 Girl Scouts in the Tres Condados Council offer seven kinds, including, of course, the Thin Mint.
Loosen your belt. It’s Girl Scout cookie time.
Girl Scouts throughout Ventura County will be doing their best for the next week to make you forget about calories and, instead, give in to the Caramel deLite, the Praline Royale, the Lemon Pastry Creme, and, of course, the chocoholic’s favorite, the Thin Mint.
By last year’s count, it looks like they do a good job of it. The 8,000 or so Scouts in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, which make up the Tres Condados Council, sold 740,532 boxes of cookies. And, throughout the country last year, Scouts unloaded 172 million boxes onto cookie lovers.
Where did this cookie thing begin? National Scout officials say Girl Scout troops were baking and selling something like a shortbread cookie back in the 1920s. The cookies apparently were a hit because in 1934 the first commercial baker was hired to do the job.
Now the girls sell seven varieties of cookies--the Thin Mint is by far the bestseller. Each box is $2.50. Out of that the troop keeps 35 cents profit to help fund troop activities.
For calorie watchers, here’s the bottom line: The calorie count goes up to 60 on some of the cookies. The Thin Mint weighs in at 40, and the shortbread has the least with 35.
“We had a cracker one year, but it wasn’t a real big seller,” said Anne Hackett, assistant director of fund development and marketing for the council. The less-caloric offering garnered only 4% of the sales, she said.
“I don’t know if the buying public just prefers something sweet,” Hackett said.
The good news is the cookies are all made with vegetable shortening, they contain no preservatives, and they are even kosher.
Hackett said bakers took the tropical oil out of the non-chocolate cookies about 1990. But the cookies with the chocolate coating still contain tropical oil because it has a higher melting point--a necessity since the cookies are not refrigerated and bakers have little control over the storage environment once they are shipped out.
“They’re working on it,” she said.
The nutritional content of the cookies doesn’t seem to bother the people who buy although, Hackett said, “We get a few questions.”
Alicia Johnson, the tri-counties’ top cookie seller the last three years, hears a few people decline the cookies, saying they are on a diet.
“I think they’re just trying to be polite,” she said. She simply pitches the less sweet shortbread cookie.
Her pitch, whatever it is, seems to work. Last year she sold 1,700 boxes. She sold so many that prior to delivery they nearly filled the living room of her Oxnard home.
Alicia, 12, who attends Hueneme Christian School, has her own system of selling. She keeps lists of the previous year’s customers and calls them to ask if they want to reorder. Then she solicits neighbors, businesses, nursing homes. Her parents help her sell cookies where they work.
She has all the descriptions of the cookies memorized. “My voice gets hoarse after awhile,” she said. “And it gets pretty tiring delivering them all.”
In fact, it gets so time-consuming and tiring that Alicia may ease up this year. “I don’t think I’ll recruit new buyers,” she said. “I want to give other girls a chance.”
The girls will be taking cookie orders until Feb. 19. The cookies will be delivered March 5-27.
Cookie-selling itself has changed a lot from a generation ago when the girls sold solely door-to-door, Hackett said. Now they use telemarketing, or they set up booths at grocery stores or other high-trafficked areas.
“We can only let girls sell during the daylight hours,” she said. Because more mothers work these days, often no one is home during the day. Fewer girls go door-to-door for safety reasons.
“It’s not as safe as when I was growing up,” Hackett said.
* FYI
Girl Scouts throughout Ventura County will be taking cookie orders until Feb. 19. Cookies will be delivered March 5-27. For information about cookie sales, call 649-2383. For Scouting information, call 649-9369.