It’s Girl Scout cookie season, and we couldn’t be happier.
The behemoth fundraiser for the Girl Scouts of America sells some 200 million boxes of cookies each year, generating $700 million in sales. Today it’s a high-tech operation, but the fundraiser began in the way you’d expect: with a few moms helping their girls.
In 1917, the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma needed a service project. So the girls partnered with their moms to bake cookies and sell them in the high school cafeteria.
The idea caught on, and in 1922, The American Girl magazine published a simple sugar cookie recipe for all Girl Scouts to use. At the time, the cost of ingredients to make seven dozen cookies averaged 30 cents; it was suggested the girls could charge that for just one dozen. It was a fundraiser, after all.
Since then, Girl Scouts have found creative markets for their goodies. Over the years they’ve gone door to door and set up tables in school cafeterias, outside grocery stores, at train stations, and in suburban shopping malls.
During the Depression, Girl Scouts in Philadelphia sold cookies in the city’s gas and electric company windows. Most recently, marijuana legalization has led enterprising scouts to set up cookie tables outside dispensary doors. (Not surprisingly, they sell out fast.)
There’s even an app for that — the Digital Cookie Platform, which lets Girl Scouts manage sales online. If you’re lucky enough to know a Girl Scout, you can order on her account and have cookies shipped anywhere; if not, just enter your zip code on the site and a list of sales locations will pop up.
If you’re hankering for a Samoa or Trefoil, you’ve still got time. Sales run through March 7; click here to find your nearest cookie table.
More fun Girl Scout Cookie facts:
Thin Mints are the most popular flavor. The least? Cranberry Citrus Crisps, which people say are TOO healthy.
Three flavors will always be in rotation: Thin Mints (originally chocolate mints); Do-si-dos (the sandwich cookie); and Trefoils (simple shortbread).
All Girl Scout cookies are certified kosher.
The most effective sales pitch? $5 per box, or four for $20. Gets us every time.