First you pierce the think layer of chocolate with your teeth… and your upper palette tingles from the mint.  Then comes the satisfying crunch of the wafer inside.  There’s nothing like a Thin Mint from the Girl Scouts.

It’s a huge business… but a little less huge during the pandemic… because the normal channels used to peddle the cookies were closed off.   You couldn’t set up a booth.  You couldn’t send mom and dad to work with a sign up sheet … because… everybody was home.

So sales were down significantly and the Girl Scouts have 15-million extra boxes of cookies.  They’re sitting at the bakers’ warehouses.

So what to do with 50-million dollars worth of cookies?  Sell ‘em next year?  Nope.  Shelf life is 12 months.  Sell ‘em to grocery stores?  Nope.  The annual sale becomes less special… when you can get the cookies at any old store.   They did put them in Harmons at the peak of the pandemic… but now… it’s unclear what happens to all those cookie boxes.

What is clear… is that no matter how much it seems like a big business. And they sell 800-million dollars worth of cookies in a good year.   the pandemic taught us that there’s  one ingredient that makes Girl Scout cookies a hit.
The girls themselves.

They’re the 50-million dollars worth of magic that makes it all happen

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