Girl Scout Cookies - Another Teachable Moment

I was walking through the mall this morning with my son and there were girl scouts selling Girl Scout Cookies. We went up to the booth and asked and learned the following (these are mostly the answers of a mom and daughter in a mall, they are not necessarily proper spokepeople or even right and regional differences are probable):

Q - Are they made with real girl scouts?  A - Huh?

Q - Why do you sell cookies? A - To raise funds.

Q - For what?   A - For a trip to Georgia.

Q - How much money do you make on each box (they sell for $4).  A - $0.71

Q - Do you feel that the annual stuffing of cookies into everyone's hands greatly contributes to the problem of obesity?  A - Huh? Probably not, we only sell them for three weeks.  And mostly they're all eaten in a month.

Q - Whats the quota per girl scout?  A - 200 boxes

Q - Who else makes money on the cookies? Who sells them to you? - A ABC Bakers and Little Brownie Bakers. 

Q - What cute sounding companies. Are they really independents or just clever brand names for people like P&G, General Mills, or Nabisco? . A - Don't know.  (I looked it up and their website appears to be one of a little company but they don't say one way or another if they are independent or not).

Q - How much?  A - $4.00 a box (we took two)

Q - How many boxes of cookies get sold every year? A. Don't know. Our troop sells 2,000 boxes.

Q - Well how many igrl scout troops are there? Don't know.

I googled the question and wikipedia cites an estimate of 200 million boxes per year.  At retail, this would be $800 million.  I also saw this on the authoritative GirlScout.org site: The $700 million Girl Scout Cookie Program is the largest girl-led business in the country....

It was fun learning about the economics of the