Girl Scouts Taste Disappointment As Raspberry Rally Cookies Hit eBay

The annual Girl Scout Cookie sale takes place each year between January and April. As the planet's biggest entrepreneurial program run by girls, it offers participants the opportunity to hone important life skills, including interacting with people and mastering the ins and outs of budgets and sales projections. Moreover, proceeds go to the respective local Girl Scouts troops and councils involved in the selling. This offers scouts the satisfaction of watching their hard work translate into real revenues and seeing the good those revenues can do in their communities.

So, the stakes are high, and that's not even taking into account how very big this business actually is. To wit, the Girl Scouts sell 200 million boxes each year, surpassing sales of Oreos, not to mention sales of all Chips Ahoy and Milano cookies combined, according to data cited by Vox in 2019.

This year saw the introduction of two new flavors, one of which the Girl Scouts anticipated might be in short supply due to ongoing global supply chain issues. But it's actually the other that's been causing the most headaches of late. Made available exclusively through e-commerce, the Raspberry Rally, touted as a raspberry version of the Thin Mint, sold out within hours of becoming available.

Unfortunately, what should be cause for elation has apparently left a bitter taste for the Scouts. Now that the Girl Scouts have sold out their Raspberry Rally inventory, they're left to look on as eBay-ers list boxes for resale at black-market mark-ups.

The new Girl Scout Cookie, Raspberry Rally, sold like hotcakes running out in hours, according to CNN Business. Now, it seems some eBay accounts are selling them — again — and this time at highly jacked-up prices. Girl Scout cookies, which are not labeled for resale, and which the Girl Scouts organization urges cookie cravers against buying at resale, are normally sold for between $4 and $7 a box.

All Raspberry Rallies sold in their intended channels were sold directly to customers at prices in line with that rubric. Unfortunately, however, some who have managed to get their hands on some boxes are now offering them for resale via eBay to the tune of over $70 per box.

The Girls Scouts of the USA are crestfallen, an authorized rep told Fox Business. "When cookies are purchased through a third-party seller, Girl Scout troops are deprived of proceeds." As a product program director for Girl Scouts of Ohio's Heartland, Jessica Martin, told local news outlet WBNS, this practice "goes against everything that we stand for as Girl Scouts."

Moreover, this practice could harm the value and reputation of Girl Scout Cookies because resold cookies may be expired or otherwise not up to the organization's high standards. Further, reselling may constitute theft of the organization's intellectual property. "Purchasing cookies in this way does not support Girl Scouts participating in the cookie program," the organization is making abundantly clear.