ALEX HAMMAKE
ANTELOPE STAFF

The over 100-year tradition that started in Muskogee, Oklahoma has snowballed into a nationwide phenomenon. This includes twelve varieties of cookies, two national bakers, thousands of troops selling cookies and a Dairy Queen Blizzard flavor in tribute to the Thin Mint this summer. 

I never sold Girl Scout cookies. I instead sold the warm-up to draining the wallet, BOY SCOUT POPCORN! Nothing screams “ripoff” when you’re selling microwave popcorn for $20 when I could buy it for $6 at Walmart. But hey, it’s a first-grader selling it, and it’s pretty hard to say no to a kid. There’s still a little bit of guilt inside me for selling uber-overpriced popcorn to close family, friends and neighbors.

Instead, the Girl Scouts have the prime market starting off the new year and they provide the biggest challenge to everyone who decided to lose weight for their new years’ resolution. Here comes this elementary school-aged girl on your doorstep, asking you if you want to support her girl scout troop and buy some girl scout cookies. Yup, so long to the resolution! you think as you put your name down to order three boxes of thin mints, a couple boxes of Caramel DeLites and a box or two of Lemonades.

When marking off your Girl Scout Cookie order this year, you’ll notice a brand-new cookie in the lineup. The Adventurefuls cookie is the new cookie this year. Starting off with a brownie base, the Adventureful features a caramel crème center, a chocolate drizzle and a hint of sea salt. It’s the second new cookie this decade to be added to the Girl Scout cookie lineup, as the organization added Lemon-Ups in 2020. The Girl Scouts have acted aggressively in their lineup additions, adding their gluten-free caramel chocolate chip cookie in 2019 and Girl Scout S’mores in 2016.

There is also a large market for Girl Scout cookies on eBay. With Girl Scout cookies having two national distributors, ABC Bakers and Little Brownie Bakers, there are some differences between the bakers, and there’s also a difference in the cookies baked between distributors. Little Brownie Bakers has Toffee-tastic, Lemon-Ups and the Girl Scout S’mores cookies, while ABC Bakers does not. Likewise, ABC Bakers has the Caramel Chocolate Chip cookies, the Lemonades and the Toast-Yay! cookies, while Little Brownie doesn’t. Since both companies are suppliers to girl scouts in different parts of the country, there’s always a big market to sell cookies on eBay so consumers can have every cookie available. It also teaches these girls the online business sales that are needed in the emerging digital economy.

So as the girl scouts scour all throughout neighborhoods, businesses and even cyberspace to sell and deliver their beloved cookies; learning valuable business skills along the way, help out and buy a box (or two)!