Brownies and Cookies

Del Mar resident Kate is doing well with her Girl Scout’s annual fund raising cookie sale. She has had years of experience. She started selling cookies as a Girl Scout “Daisy” when she was in kindergarten four years ago. Kate, now a Brownie, is at work along with her seven troop members selling this year’s offerings of cookies with 12 flavor possibilities, Thin Mints being the overall favorite. 

The Scouts also keep busy with helpful projects to earn their next badges. Kate’s sales goal this year: 375 boxes of cookies. With help from her troop leader mother and her father, Kate, up to date in the digital world, set up a sign in her driveway with a QR code ready to scan that allows passers by to order cookies on line. She reported her sales numbers total about 300 so far, many boxes bought by people in the neighborhood. She has a bit more time to reach that target number.

Girl Scouts have been in the cookie business since 1917, five years after Juliette Gordon Low, nicknamed “Daisy,” started the Girl Scouts with 18 girls, the first troop, in Savannah, Georgia in 1912. A variation of the original concept of a fund raising bake sale, the first cookies sold were indeed home baked by the girls to raise money to support activities. As the organization grew nationally the Girl Scouts switched to selling commercially produced boxed cookies in 1936. By 2014 they were selling boxed cookies in person and added e-commerce to the business of cookie sales through Digital Cookie.

A portion of the earned proceeds stays local. The troop takes a slice of the sales profits to pay for further activities and those badges and donates some of the funds. This year’s donations went to the Helen Woodward Animal Center and another local nonprofit. Alas, Kate too has an issue with that pesky supply chain. Some types of cookies sold out and are no longer available to reorder.