At grocery stores and sled dog races, Alaska’s Girl Scouts mark arrival of spring with cookie sales

It’s officially what passes for spring in Alaska: Days are getting longer, snow piles are giving way to slush -- and Girl Scout cookie season is upon us.

In Alaska, the iconic cookies show up at grocery stores and dog races. They’re sold in Anchorage but also in communities off the road system like Gustavus and Unalaska.

More than 115,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies were flown from Oregon to Anchorage last month as part of the Girl Scouts of Alaska Council’s share of over 400,000 packages. The packages were distributed throughout the council area that stretches from Ketchikan to just south of Cantwell. (The Fairbanks-based Farthest North Girl Scout Council covers the rest of the state.)

Alaska’s favorite cookie varies between Samoas and Thin Mints, a truly “neck and neck race”, said Leslie Ridle, CEO of Girl Scouts of Alaska.

Cookie sales help troops pay for trips, activities and experiences. The girls in Anchorage Troop 436 are using this year’s earnings to help fund a three-night trip to Homer, where they plan to earn cadet badges and celebrate graduating from sixth grade, said troop leader Amber Brubaker.

Last weekend, the girls took ski lessons at Alyeska Resort in Girdwood, and this weekend they will spend a night at the Alaska Zoo.

Other troops have used cookie funds to camp in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve and in Juneau. This year, some are traveling around Europe and attending the National Girl Scout Convention in Florida.

Although it took some time for the Girl Scouts to form in Alaska, they’ve been in the state for more than 70 years, Ridle said.

Local scouts have been selling cookies throughout March and will continue to sell at booths around the city on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

On a recent March evening, the girls in Troop 436 gathered at a Fred Meyer in South Anchorage to sell cookies near the store’s entrance. They danced, sang and enticed customers with cartoon cookie costumes and endearing personalities, something they figured works to their advantage.

People crowded their booth and a line frequently reappeared as the girls eagerly explained the different cookie flavors, counted back change and boxed up large orders.

“It’s not just about eating a good cookie,” Ridle said. “It’s all the things that go in behind it for a girl.”

Ridle, who was a Girl Scout in Douglas 55 years ago, said selling cookies helps teach girls how to be entrepreneurs, manage money, talk with people and develop those skills in a safe environment.

So how and why did Girl Scout Cookie sales begin?

According to the Girl Scouts, the sale of cookies began in 1917 as a way to finance troop activities, five years after Juliette Gordon Low started Girl Scouts in the United States. It was around that time that the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, began selling homemade cookies as a service project in their high school cafeteria.

By the 1920s, girls were going door-to-door selling simple sugar cookies packaged in wax paper bags for 25 to 35 cents per dozen. In 1936, the national Girl Scout organization began the process of licensing the first commercial bakers to produce cookies. The Girl Scout Cookie name received a U.S. trademark registration in 1973.

Throughout the following decades, new flavors were introduced and in 2014 Girl Scout Cookies went digital.

Raspberry Rally, the new 2023 cookie, was only available online and Anchorage’s stock of them sold out within the first 12 hours, Ridle said.

Nationally, short supplies of the raspberry cookies were blamed on supply chain issues and labor shortages. The Girl Scout organization has also weathered concerns about child labor and unhealthy ingredients.

But the lure of those Girl Scouts and their sweet treats remains strong.

Ridle says cookie season represents nostalgia and happiness.

Every year, she buys a box of cookies from every girl who asks her, estimating that she probably has well over 100 boxes on order –– enough to make a towering Girl Scout Cookie pyramid in her office.

In true Alaska form, girls were out March 5 on Willow Lake, where they sold cookies on the snow-covered ice during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race restart.

Girl Scout Khaydee Chasse was accompanied by her dad, Stuart Chasse, while they walked up and down the startling line chute and trail towing frozen Samoas, Do-Si-Dos, Trefoils and Tagalongs.

“Girl Scout Cookies!!! Get your Girl Scout Cookies!” Stuart screamed to the crowd as the pair started moving after a sale.

His daughter eyed the tower of cookie boxes balancing in the family’s sled.

They didn’t get far before being stopped again.