Girl Scout Cookies Will be $6 in Some States. Is Idaho One of Them?

Nobody is immune to the cost of enterprise, not even the Girl Scouts. No longer are the young fundraisers carefully baking cookies themselves and selling locally. These big business entrepreneurs are calculating the price per box and adjusting accordingly.

No one expects to have home-baked cookies like the original troops back in the 1920s and 1930s. Back then, a dozen sugar cookies from a Girl Scout would set you back 25-35 cents. Costs of product increase. There’s no getting around it. Historically, cookie prices have risen just like inflation.

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In 1935, the Girl Scouts of Greater New York began to sell commercially baked cookies. That’s when the real business acumen of these savvy younglings took off. By 1974, the cost of a box of Girl Scout Cookies would run you $1.00 to $1.25 depending on location.

In 1981, with a cost of $1.50 per box, scouts were collecting $.65 cents for each box sold. Prices doubled to $3 per box by 1999 (18 years) and included low-fat and sugar-free options, and 5 years later (2004) the average was $3.50 per box.

Then in an effort to not raise prices, in 2009 the decision was made to diminish the number of cookies per box. By 2012, the cost had risen to an average of $4 for a now and forever smaller box of cookies. In just 3 more years, prices had already skyrocketed to $5 per box and $6 for some specialty flavors, but that was just catching up to the price already set in states like California and Hawaii.

Will Idaho be the Next State Hit by Cookie Inflation?

As prices go in California and Hawaii, so eventually goes the nation. Now Indiana, Illinois, and Massachusetts are moving to $6 per box. Since the price is set at a local council level, who knows where will be the next to fall? These scouts know how to calculate the cost of doing business against the rate of demand.

We don’t talk about online only Raspberry Rally debacle. That price per box on eBay is insane.