Rising costs bite into Girl Scout Cookie portions
If you seem to be tearing through those Girl Scout Thin Mints a little faster this year, you aren't imagining things.
Fewer cookies were packaged into Thin Mints, Do-si-dos and Tagalongs boxes this year, and the Lemon Chalet Crème cookies were resized to compensate for the rising cost of baking staples.
No changes were made to other cookies, according to the Girl Scouts of the USA.
Alternatives to the changes were to raise cookie prices or use cheaper ingredients – two options that were rejected, said Natalie Martin, marketing director for the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas.
A box of cookies costs $3.50.
"We aren't talking about a drastic change. We are just talking about a couple cookies," Martin said, adding that the boxes shrunk by only a centimeter. "People understand that we are all taking hits."
The Girls Scouts certainly aren't the first organization to alter product size and portions because of higher food costs.
Products on grocery-store shelves throughout the nation have been reshaped, resized and repackaged in response to new marketing ideas, jumps in food and gas prices and the economic downturn, said Lynn Dornblaser, a new-product analyst at Mintel International, a marketing research firm.
Dornblaser said she isn't surprised by the change in Girl Scout cookies.
If you seem to be tearing through those Girl Scout Thin Mints a little faster this year, you aren't imagining things.
Fewer cookies were packaged into Thin Mints, Do-si-dos and Tagalongs boxes this year, and the Lemon Chalet Crème cookies were resized to compensate for the rising cost of baking staples.
No changes were made to other cookies, according to the Girl Scouts of the USA.
Alternatives to the changes were to raise cookie prices or use cheaper ingredients – two options that were rejected, said Natalie Martin, marketing director for the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas.
A box of cookies costs $3.50.
"We aren't talking about a drastic change. We are just talking about a couple cookies," Martin said, adding that the boxes shrunk by only a centimeter. "People understand that we are all taking hits."
The Girls Scouts certainly aren't the first organization to alter product size and portions because of higher food costs.
Products on grocery-store shelves throughout the nation have been reshaped, resized and repackaged in response to new marketing ideas, jumps in food and gas prices and the economic downturn, said Lynn Dornblaser, a new-product analyst at Mintel International, a marketing research firm.
Dornblaser said she isn't surprised by the change in Girl Scout cookies.
"It is a reflection of them needing to keep the price in line with other products, but they also need to keep in mind the rising baking cost," she said. "You've got to balance it the best way you can."
The Girl Scouts faced spikes in ingredient costs from 2007. Flour rose in cost by more than 30 percent, various cooking oils by 40 percent to 187 percent, and cocoa by at least 20 percent.
Carol Orbin, a Girl Scout mom from Flower Mound, said the changes haven't stopped people from ordering.
"To me, their decision makes sense with the economy the way it is," Orbin said. "You can't change the taste of the cookies. No one wants to see the price go up either, so I am fine with what they did."
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