The First Brand Behind Girl Scout Cookies Is Still In Grocery Stores Today

Mention Girl Scout cookies in conversation and you may find yourself debating which is the best flavor (for the record, we ranked Caramel DeLites No. 1, but the Thin Mints were a close second). Today, this leadership organization for girls sells more than 200 million boxes of cookies a year, which are made by either one of two companies: ABC Bakers or Little Brownie Bakers. But way back in 1917, when the Girl Scouts first began selling cookies to raise funds for the organization, it was the girls themselves who baked the cookies. That changed in 1934 when the Greater Philadelphia Girl Scout Council, following a banner-cookie-selling year, contracted the city's Keebler-Weyl bakery to begin making its cookies.

Back then, there were no Thin Mints (the most popular today) or Caramel DeLites, just a shortbread cookie in a single flavor, vanilla, made in the shape of the organization's distinctive trefoil design. Yes, it's the same Keebler company you know, and no, the baking production wasn't carried out by elves in a hollow tree. The origins of Keebler pre-date those of the Girl Scouts, which started in 1912 in Georgia, back when women still couldn't vote in the U.S. German immigrant Godfrey Keebler founded his Philadelphia bakery in 1853. But when the Scouts and Keebler joined forces, it kicked off a baking frenzy that's still being felt today.

In 1933, Girl Scouts troops from Philadelphia sold about 100,000 boxes of cookies in only a month that they'd baked themselves at the city's gas and electric company's demonstration ovens. Each box contained 44 cookies and sold for 23 cents. With those kinds of numbers, the local Girl Scouts decided to contract with Keebler-Weyl the next year. The bakery produced 100,000 boxes, and two years later, the national organization began working with Keebler, which became the go-to baker for the Girl Scouts.

By the 1950s, there were 30 companies producing Girl Scout cookies, some flavors of which, like the chocolate and vanilla sandwich cookies called Van'chos, haven't survived, while others, like Thin Mints, introduced in 1939, have thrived. Through it all, Keebler continued to produce cookies for the Girl Scouts. Today, Little Brownie Bakers (which was a division of Keebler) is owned, as is Keebler, by the Italian company the Ferrero Group, which is behind brands like Kinder and Nutella, among many others. Even with all those changes, you can still get a version of the Girl Scout Trefoils, the shortbread cookies that started it all way back in the 1930s.