NYC Girl Scout cookie sales crumble to decade low — thanks to ‘economic uncertainty'

Yahoo

05-05-2025

That's the way the cookie sales crumble.
Economic uncertainty is taking a giant bite out of New York Girl Scout cookie sales — leaving the local chapter of the organization with its lowest performing season in over a decade, The Post has learned.
Scouts across the five boroughs hawked just 1.1 million boxes of Thin Mints, Samoas and other cookies (including and the now-discontinued S'mores) during the 2024-2025 season as penny-pinching New Yorkers tightened their belts.
That's the lowest sales figure since the 2013-2014 season, when the Girl Scouts of Greater New York (GSGNY) sold just over 1 million boxes of their famous cookies, according to the group's annual financial reports.
It's also half of the record-breaking 2.2 million boxes that were sold during 2020-2021 as the Big Apple was plunged into the Covid-19 pandemic.
'They're selling at a moment in time when there's a lot of economic uncertainty,' explained Sewin Chan, a consumer behavior expert at New York University.
'People don't know what's happening, they don't know about the impact of the tariffs … they're scared about future price increases. Maybe they're buying, you know, their cars and their computers and their iPhones, thinking that prices will increase in the future, and so then they've got to tighten their belts in other dimensions.
'There's that part of general consumer uneasiness at this moment in time.'
While the pandemic was also a turbulent time, marked by layoffs and skyrocketing prices, people were generally staying home more and likely had more pocket money to give to the Girl Scouts.
Today's New Yorkers don't have that same luxury, Chan said.
Girl Scout cookies in the metro area will cost $7, whether it's for a 15-count box of Tagalongs or a much more economical 32-count box of Thin Mints.
That means the decline in sales of about 110,000 boxes from the previous year adds up to a lot of dough. The Girl Scouts keep about 75% of the proceeds from cookie sales.
The cost jumped from $5 in 2023, the same year sales dropped by 17%. That's 250,000 boxes.
In 2014, a box was just $4 in the Big Apple.
Chan said she was personally shocked by the new price tag.
'When you hear about general economic uneasiness and people don't know what's happening to their retirement,' she said.
'The prices of goods might be increasing in the future, they're reading in the papers that these tariffs are going to increase prices — they're perhaps saving more for the rainy day that they think is going to happen.'
To make matters worse for the Girl Scouts, membership is also dwindling. The total number of scouts in the five boroughs is the lowest in a decade — with about 25,000 members.
Membership reached a peak of more than 38,000 ahead of the pandemic, but lost 34% when schools and clubs shut down to mitigate the spread of the virus — and most girls never came back to the scouts.
Both the GSGNY and Girl Scouts USA declined to comment when reached by The Post.