Cookie time: Girl Scouts distribute cookies, adjust to bakery changes

"How many Thin Mints, Miss Megan?" 

"Fifty-four!" Megan Nielsen answered, and the group of Girl Scouts, troop leaders and volunteers got to work moving and stacking 54 cases of Thin Mints cookies. 

Nielsen, the troop leader of Girl Scout Troop 1671, was overseeing the distribution of all the cookies for Green River's Girl Scout troops Monday afternoon. 

"We have a crazy number of cookies," Nielsen said. "We have a total of 1,645 cases, with 12 boxes a case."

"19,740 is what we should have," Troop 1932 Leader Jen Wilkinson added, referring back to the math on how many cookies were stacked high around them. "Almost 20,000." 

"There's more cookies here than people in Green River right now," Nielsen said with a laugh. 

The pallets of cookies rolled into Green River on a truck, were unloaded with a forklift, went through a count and quality check, then were divided into stacks for each troop and distributed to the Girls Scouts and troop leaders. The thousands of cookies included the paper sales, which have been pre-ordered and will be distributed, as well as cookies for booth sales, according to Wilkinson. 

Cookie distribution day is always an adventure, Nielsen said. Sometimes they have to battle through bad weather, so they were especially thankful for sunshine. This year's trouble, however, was a mechanical issue with the delivery truck, meaning the cookies had to be transferred to a different truck and the shipment was delayed. Just organizing and distributing the cookies can also take several hours, if not the entire afternoon and into the evening for those like Nielsen and Wilkinson who are helping run everything. 

With so much work to be done, the troops are especially thankful for the extra support and help they get from the community. White Mountain Lumber and the Sweetwater #2350 Fraternal Order of Eagles in Green River are especially helpful every year. White Mountain Lumber donates the use of a forklift, and a driver for it, to unload the cookies from the truck. The Eagles lets the Girl Scouts use the covered patio space beside their building for organizing and distributing the cookies. 

Now that they have their cookies, each Girl Scout will have time to deliver their paper sale orders first. Selling at booths around town will start next week, Wilkinson explained. Nielsen added that troops with especially lofty goals can also get more cookies later from the "cookie cupboard" provided by their council, which for Green River is the Girl Scouts of Montana and Wyoming (GSMW). How many cookies are sold depends on the ambition of the individual troops, with some selling several hundred cases.

"It's really up to the girls and what they put their money towards and how many they want to sell or how hard they want to work," Nielsen said. 

Wilkinson said the Scouts especially love selling cookies at booths, and they get excited about what they will do with the money they raise from the sales. This year, her troop wants to go horseback riding. In the past, Nielsen's girls have done activities like camping and rafting trips. 

"They do use the money for all kinds of things, from community service events to getting awards, going on high adventure stuff, or just taking a camping trip together and learning new things," Wilkinson said.

While selling cookies each year is a staple of Girl Scout tradition, sometimes the cookies themselves go through slight changes. This year, all of Green River's troops are adjusting to differences in names, flavors, and prices, and they want to get the word out to customers so they know what to expect when they get ready to buy their favorite cookies. 

"It's all because we switched bakeries this year," Wilkinson explained. "Instead of using Little Brownie Bakers we've gone with ABC Baker, which has bakeries all over the place." 

Girl Scout councils across the nation choose what bakery to get their cookies from, and because of some contractual changes with the previous bakery, the GSMW council decided to switch.

"They felt that ABC Baker would benefit the girls more," Nielsen said. 

Switching bakers means a few changes in the cookies themselves. One of the biggest adjustments is in some of the cookie titles, according to Wilkinson. Do-si-dos are Peanut Butter Sandwiches, Tagalongs are Peanut Butter Patties and Samoas are Caramel deLites. 

"They're the same cookies, but they have different names," Nielsen explained. 

There are also some cookie changes, such as Lemon-Ups being replaced with the slightly changed - and, in Wilkinson's opinion, improved - version, Lemonades. There's a new cookie, "Toast Yays," which is shaped like a piece of toast, has icing on it, and tastes somewhat similar to Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And there's a new gluten free and allergy friendly option this year - Caramel Chocolate Chip. 

Thin Mints remain the same cookie with the same name, and Adventurefuls, which were a new cookie introduced last year, are back with the same cookie and name. 

Another change coming into play this year is a slight price increase, which Wilkinson and Nielsen said they've known was coming for years. In fact, Nielsen said GSMW is the last council in the nation to implement the price increase, and she counts them lucky to have held out this long. This year, each box of Girl Scout cookies will be $5, with the gluten-free cookies being $6. 

Nielsen also pointed out that a small change on the boxes themselves is the sell-by date for the cookies, which has been moved up to sometime in September. She explained the Girl Scouts do more fundraising in the fall, and the date is a goal for having the cookies sold, not necessarily a statement on when the cookies expire. Most of the cookies will stay good much longer, especially if they're frozen, she said.

With all the changes to cookie sales this year, Wilkinson said some of her girls are nervous about customer's reactions, so she hopes everyone will be understanding.

"It'll be a learning curve for the customers, for the girls, for everybody involved," Wilkinson said. She did add, however, that some of the changes took her back to her childhood, when she was a Girl Scout selling cookies made by ABC Baker under the same names. 

While Girls Scouts have a long history in Green River, they also have an especially active presence now. Nielsen explained there are currently nine troops in Green River with about 80 to 85 active Girl Scouts, from "Daisies" in kindergarten through Scouts in high school. 

"It is fun," Wilkinson said. "We do a lot of good stuff."