Selling cookies to raise funds for troop activities and community service projects started in 1917 with the first recorded cookie sale in Oklahoma. In the 1920s and 1930s, girls primarily made the cookies themselves at home to sell. These were just simple sugar cookies, and the first attempt at standardizing these cookies was in 1922 in Chicago when a local director gave the council a cookie recipe to bake and sell. In 1926, the Century Biscuit Company baked cookies for girls in Indiana to sell. By the late 1930s, girls could either make cookies at home or sell cookies produced by a licensed baker.
In the 1940s cookies were sold every year until World War II, when the government rationed sugar, butter and flour (pretty much everything you need to make cookies). Councils were advised to discontinue cookie sales and come up with other creative ways to raise funds. However after the war, cookies were once again sold nation-wide. In the 1950s cookies began to really have different standardized varieties including shortbread, sandwich cookies (in chocolate and vanilla) and chocolate mint cookies. During this time, girls began to sell door-to-door and in front of retail locations like we see today.
Sales really increased during the 1960s with young baby boomers joining the Girl Scouts and selling cookies. The best sellers during this time were chocolate mint, shortbread, and peanut butter sandwich cookies. Cookies were streamlined in the 1970s by decreasing the number of licensed bakers to 4 to make the cookies more uniform. This likely increased national branding and made them more iconic. However, there was (and still is) some autonomy between bakers, with each baker producing some optional cookies as well. This trend followed into the decades to come and into today.
Today Girl Scout cookies are baked by 2 different bakers, and each council chooses which baker they purchase cookies from. There are a large variety of cookies to choose from, and today in 2015 there are 3 new varieties being launched which include gluten-free cookies.
Some cookies come and some cookies go, but the purpose of selling cookies has always been the same. To fund the activities and service projects of the Girl Scouts in order to give back to the community and to make the world a better place.
Most of the historical information in this post is from the Girl Scout Collector's Guide (2nd. Ed. 2005) by Mary Degenhardt and Judith Kirsch, pgs. 453-7. I left out a lot of information as I want to encourage you to pick up a copy and read it for yourself. It has a lot of awesome historical pictures of Girl Scouts selling cookies and has a lot more detailed information. I've only skimmed the surface here!
Image Attribution:
"Graves Erskine and Girl Scout, circa 1945" by USMC Archives - Flickr: Graves Erskine and Girl Scout, circa 1945. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org /wiki/File:Graves_Erskine_and_Girl_Scout,_circa_1945.jpg #mediaviewer/File:Graves_Erskine_and_Girl_Scout,_circa_1945.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment