Friday, April 19, 2024
Sure, you made that New Year’s resolution – you know, the one you make every year – to lay off the sweets now that the holidays are over and lose that jelly on the belly.
But if you’re nevertheless craving something sweet, well, local Girl Scouts have the perfect excuse for you.
Girl Scout Cookie Season kicks off Friday. And with 100 percent of the proceeds being used to support and perpetuate the largest girl-led entrepreneurial program for girls in the world, it would be selfish to focus on calories, right?
Money spent on cookies helps to fund adventures and empower little girls to become anything they want to be. Taylor Swift was a Girl Scout, as were Venus Williams, Celine Dion, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sheryl Crow, Michelle Obama, Dakota Fanning, Mariah Carey and Gloria Steinem.
One of Hood County’s first-time cookie entrepreneurs is Audrey Pierce, a 6-year-old kindergartner at Emma Roberson Elementary School. She and the other four girls in Daisy Troop 2326 have personal goals to sell 200 boxes each. Their troop goal is 1,000.
“We are very excited about cookie season,” said Audrey’s mom, Katie Pierce, a new Girl Scout herself and co-leader of the Daisy Troop. (Leaders and co-leaders must be official Girl Scouts, she said.)
Cookies are $4 per box. Choices include Thin Mints, Lemonades, Peanut Butter Patties, Peanut Butter Sandwich, Caramel deLites (formerly known as Samoas), Shortbread and Thanks-A-Lot (shortbread cookies dipped in fudge and topped with an embossed thank-you message in one of five languages).
The Girl Scout organization offers some sugar-free and gluten-free choices.
The mom-and-daughter team will be helping to man the Girl Scout cookie booth at the Kroger Marketplace on Saturday, Feb. 9. Cookie sales will be from 1 to 6 p.m. that day.
“It’s a way of teaching them responsibility,” Katie said of the fundraising enterprise. “They have to sell the cookies themselves. We can’t do it for them.”
Prior to the kick-off of cookie sale season, Girl Scouts attend meetings to learn proper sales etiquette, such as not approaching the same person twice, Katie said.
In Hood County, sales are planned at several business locations through the cookie-selling season, which runs through Feb. 24.
Door-to-door sales are allowed, Katie said, but girls must be accompanied by an adult.
Most of the sales will take place at Kroger, but other sites include Tractor Supply (Saturday), Meyers gas station in Tolar (Saturday, Jan. 19), Panchitos Mexican Restaurant (Sunday, Jan. 20), and Bright-works Car Wash (Saturday, Jan. 26).
The cookies, which have been sold by the Girl Scouts organization for 100 years, have become an American staple.
Katie wasn’t a Girl Scout as a child but remembers her father bringing home boxes of Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties. Her own personal favorite is the Peanut Butter Sandwich.
“It’s one of those things that’s pretty much the same as it was when it started,” Katie said of the cookies. “They’re still as good as they were when they (first) came out.”
The top seller, she said, is the Thin Mints. Four Thin Mints are considered a serving, and the calorie count per serving is 160.
But who’s counting? There’s always the spring to get ready for swimsuit weather.
Buy Girl Scout cookies and you’ll be pushing up Daisies. But, you know, in a good way.
kcruz@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 258
