"Girl Scout Cookies" by dlofink is licensed under CC BY 2.0
When the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, sold the first batch of Girl Scout cookies in 1917, it was 25 cents for a dozen. Now it’s $5 per package, and $6 for the gluten-free ones (at least someone’s getting a cost-of-living raise.) But the price isn’t the only thing that’s changed over the last hundred years of Girl Scout cookie sales. The way they’re selling them has changed too.
Girl Scout cookies are almost as old as the Girl Scout Organization itself. The Girl Scouts in the United States were founded in 1912 by Juliette Gordon Lowe. Starting around 1917, girls baked sugar cookies in their home kitchens and sold them in order to fund troop projects. In the 1930’s, the Greater Philadelphia Girl Scout Council started using commercially baked cookies, selling them in the windows of gas and electric companies. In 1936 they started making trefoil shaped cookies and sold them in boxes with “Girl Scouts” written on them.
WWII rationing necessitated that Girl Scouts stop selling cookies and start selling calendars instead, but the suburban boom after the war increased cookie sales as Girl Scouts sold them outside of malls and grocery stores. At the time, chocolate mint, shortbread, and peanut butter were the most popular flavors (are we making you hungry yet?).
The Girl Scouts upped their game in the 1970s, licensing four commercial bakers and unifying their packaging and distribution. Now all of the boxes looked the same and contained Saul Bass’s new Girl Scout logo. The boxes showed bucolic scenes of girls doing outdoor activities to illustrate to buyers what they were funding when they bought a box. They began trademarking their cookies, using names like Do-Si-Do ® and Trefoils ®.
In 1990, the Girl Scouts introduced awards (spiffs?) for those who sold the most cookies (as well as participation pins for everyone else). In 1985, Elizabeth Brinton, nicknamed the "Cookie Queen", sold a record 18,000 (!!!) boxes of cookies. That record has been broken several times since then, most recently by Lily Bumpus in 2021, a childhood cancer survivor. She used the proceeds from her sales to help other children with cancer.
In the 2010s, cookie selling went digital as the Girl Scouts launched both a website and an app where girls could sell cookies with a personalized touch, adding a photo and bio to their individualized webpage to make cookie sales more personal. The Digital Cookie initiative is meant to help girls learn about marketing, sales, finance, and entrepreneurship.
In 2020, Girl Scout Cookies gained even more visibility when Chris Rock helped his daughter sell them at the annual Oscars awards, with the likes of Kate Winslet, John Legend, and Matt Damon picking up some boxes. Throughout the night, celebs donated money to the troop and by the end, they had raised over $65,000. While not all girls get to sell cookies at the Oscars, it’s exciting to see a beloved American tradition evolve to help girls grow and navigate the modern world of sales and marketing.
If you’re looking for cookies near you, check out the Girl Scout website to find your nearest troop and the dates/times they’ll be out selling cookies. All of the proceeds from the cookies stay local. And if you have a daughter and want her to learn a bit more about the type of work you do professionally, sign her up to join a Girl Scout troop – that way, you’ll be able to talk shop at dinner.
