In these busy days of constantly heavy-hitting news (goodbye, Summer Fridays), the Girl Scouts are here to save the day with a morsel of good news—at least for cookie lovers.
The nonprofit organization is debuting a brand new flavor for its enormously popular cookie brand. Caramel Chocolate Chip—which is comprised of caramel, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and a hint of sea salt in a chewy cookie—will be available in select areas during the next cookie selling season in 2019. The Girl Scout Cookie selling season typically runs from February to April each year.
Continuing to cater to shifting and increasingly popular food industry trends, the Caramel Chocolate Chip cookie is also touted to be gluten-free. The Girl Scouts have two other gluten-free offerings: Toffee-tastic, a buttery cookie with sweet and crunchy golden toffee bits, and Trios, a peanut butter oatmeal cookie with chocolate chips.
The Girl Scouts last announced two new cookies in 2016—at the time to celebrate 100 years of selling cookies—and both were varieties of S’mores cookies.
Launched more than 100 years ago, the Girl Scouts of America now hosts more than 2.6 million members (1.8 million girls and 800,000 adults). The Girl Scout Cookie business is estimated to be worth $800 million alone with approximately 200 million boxes of cookies sold by one million girl scouts between the ages of five and 18 nationwide. (But, as the Girl Scouts’ website notes, the money stays local to develop local leadership training activities, summer camps, and more activities.)
According to a 2016 study conducted by the Girl Scout Research Institute, approximately 85% of the 40,000 Girl Scouts surveyed from 82 troops responded that selling cookies helped them learn how to set goals and meet deadlines, while 88% said it help them become effective decision-makers. Furthermore, 88% said they learned how to manage money, and 94% said they learned business ethics through the Girl Scout Cookie Program.
While cookies might be the youth organization’s most familiar brand and lucrative fundraiser, the Girl Scouts have developed a number of new programs in the last few years to encourage leadership development amid rapid advancements in technology, business, and politics. Last summer, the Girl Scouts made it possible to earn badges for designing robots and building race cars as well as cybersecurity.
And as for the cookies, while you can still rely on your local troops to sell you a box—some sellers taking new and greater initiative each year in where they sell—the Girl Scouts have also made it possible for you to order your cookie fix directly from your phones, either online or via apps for iOS and Android.
