Girl Scouts struggle to sell cookies amid pandemic

NEW YORK • The Girl Scouts are struggling to sell a heaping pile of extra cookies: 15 million boxes of them, to be exact.

Troops with armfuls of cookies used to be a fixture outside grocery stores and on people's doorsteps.

But this year, those cookies are stuck in warehouses after Girl Scouts of the United States were confronted with two major obstacles during the coronavirus pandemic: membership has declined and the Scouts had to abandon their usual in-person selling methods.

Those problems left the national organisation with millions of extra Thin Mints, Samoas and other signature treats. Around 12 million of the 15 million boxes of surplus cookies never left the bakery warehouses in Kentucky and Indiana, the Girl Scouts said in a statement on June 15.

"Given that a majority of cookies are sold by girls at booths or other face-to-face methods, a decrease in sales was to be expected," said Scouts spokesman Kelly Parisi.

The organisation sells around 200 million boxes per year at about US$5 (S$6.70) a box. The Girl Scouts have been selling cookies for more than a century.

Individual troops sell cookies in their community and Scouts earn badges when they sell a certain number of boxes. Troops sell the cookies at booths, events, outside stores and online.

The cookies are typically sold during the first four months of the year. "It's exceedingly rare to have significant excess inventory, but the pandemic greatly impacted our programme," said Ms Parisi.

In the Midwest, the Girl Scouts experienced a small decline in sales this year. Cookie sales were down about 6 per cent from last year as the troops pivoted to a digital sales model, according to Ms Tish Bolger, chief executive of the Girl Scouts of Minnesota and Wisconsin River Valleys.

Across the US, Girl Scout membership has been on the decline for a decade, so the pandemic only aggravated the problem. "As states and local governments have reopened, we've seen membership rebounding," said Ms Parisi.

Confronting declining sales, the Girl Scouts announced in January they were teaming up with Grub-hub to sell and deliver cookies. The delivery service agreed to waive the fees that it usually charges.

While this year's surplus is much larger than usual, Ms Parisi said the organisation had dealt with previous cookie gluts by donating extra boxes to the military or emergency medical workers. Girl Scout cookies are available to civilians on the organisation's website.

The organisation debuted a new variety of cookies this year: Toast-Yay!, which are shaped like slices of toast and dipped in icing.

NYTIMES