Girl Scout cookies shrink along with economy

The lousy economy is taking a bite out of even the venerable Girl Scout cookie.

Higher prices for flour, oil and cocoa will mean smaller Samoas and thinner boxes of Thin Mints for many cookie consumers this year. Tighter household budgets, meanwhile, are threatening to put a pinch on sales, even for the sweetest of Scouts.

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Cookie buyers might notice they’re getting less for their $3.50 per box when they get their goodies in a couple of months.

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“Oh, I am so prayerful that we will” meet our goals, said Anita Walton, product sales manager for the 40,000-member Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta, which typically sells 3 million to 3.5 million boxes a year.

After a month of door-to-door sales, Atlanta-area Girl Scouts turn in their sales tallies this week.

Fears about deadly peanut butter also are threatening sales, even though the Girl Scouts say none of their peanut butter cookies contain paste from the Georgia plant at the center of a nationwide salmonella outbreak.

Regardless of how sales end up, buyers might notice they’re getting a little less for their $3.50 per box when they get their goodies in a couple of months.

Samoas and Tagalongs, for instance, are slightly smaller this year.

Boxes of Thin Mints, Do-si-dos and Trefoils are smaller by an ounce in some markets — the equivalent of two fewer Thin Mints per box — but because Georgia troops use a different baker, Georgians will get just as many Thin Mints as they did last year, according to Walton.

Michelle Tompkins, national spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts, said flour prices at the organization’s two bakers are up 30 percent. Transportation costs are up just as much. Cocoa prices, she said, rose 20 percent or more.

In Atlanta, Girl Scouts are appealing to consumers’ charitable sides to support sales this year. Scouts are asking consumers to buy a few extra boxes to donate to local food banks and shelters, Walton said.

“We know some of our areas have been hard hit with layoffs and business closings,” she said. “But even if people are cutting back … we ask that they think about those donations.”