Girl Scouts say they have millions of boxes of unsold cookies due to the pandemic

By Leah Asmelash, CNN

Buying Girl Scout cookies has become a long-awaited yearly tradition for many people in the US.

But this year, the organization is faced with an unusual problem: Millions of boxes of cookies remain unsold, all because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Girl Scouts of the USA has has 15 million boxes of unsold cookies in surplus this year, with about 12 million boxes that never even left the baking warehouses, the organization said in a statement to CNN.

“It’s exceedingly rare to have significant excess inventory but the pandemic greatly impacted our cookie program, despite demand for cookies remaining strong,” Girl Scouts said.

Typically, Girl Scouts sells just under 200 million boxes of cookies per season, according to the organization. This season’s numbers have yet to be calculated, but as of June, not all of them have sold.

It doesn’t mean that every regional council had a surplus of unsold boxes, though. Girl Scouts of Central Texas, for example, told CNN they did not experience an overstock of boxes.

Girl Scouts of the USA said that 100% of the proceeds from each and every cookie purchase “stay local with the troop and its council to power essential leadership programming throughout the year, so we did everything we could to mitigate those losses to recoup lost revenue in addition to helping the bakers sell through their inventory.”

In years past, Girl Scout troops sold cookies outside grocery stories, libraries and in public parks. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, many troops went digital-only. Some even took to social media to advertise cookies. The organization also partnered with Grubhub in January to sell the cookies safely.

The extra cookie boxes aren’t available for individual purchase, but anyone interested can buy cookies that will be donated to first responders, food banks and “other worthy causes,” the organization said.

CNN’s Kelsie Smith contributed to this report.