Mainebiz

V O L . X X X I I N O. V I M A R C H 2 3 , 2 0 2 6 10 O n your marks, get set … it's time to guess the cookie! at's the name of the game this Saturday inside Incense & Peppermints, a Waterville candy store bursting with sweets and scented candles. Today it's serving as a makeshift classroom for a dozen Girl Scout troops. e rapid-fire quiz challenges participants to name the Girl Scout Cookie based on clues about its taste, texture, color, aroma and appearance. Nine varieties are in this year's lineup, from the perennial best-selling in Mints to the brand-new Exploremores, to help the entrepreneurs-in-training raise funds for local troop activities and community projects. "We're going to use those five senses to describe each cookie, and you guys are going to try and use the clues to make hypotheses and figure out what those cookies are. Make sense?" parent volunteer Megan Boone asks six Girl Scout Cadettes from Troop 1353. Assisted by a store employee introduced to the middle schoolers as "Peppermint Patty," the emcee goes into "Jeopardy"-host mode to start the round. All afternoon long, Boone will repeat the exercise several times for the Cookie Rally to prepare novices and experienced sellers alike and get them fired up for the two-month selling season that starts the next day. Similar events are held across the country. For Waterville's version in late February, 119 Girl Scouts from kin- dergarten through high school swarm across the central Maine town's retail strip on an unusually mild day in the 40s, wearing activity cards around their necks attached to orange lan- yards that read "Brave. Fierce. Fun." While some don uniforms decorated with service pins and patches, others are in street attire for workshops at 10 local businesses covering skills from safety to goal setting. First up in the cookie guessing game is a mystery treat described as having a soft crunch when you break it, with a deep aroma and chewy on the inside. Some of the girls correctly guess Adventurefuls, a brownie- inspired delicacy the emcee notes is only a few years old. "Yeah, but I still memorize cook- ies," Amelia Wolfe declares before tackling the next round. e game was also a hit with fel- low troop member Natalie Weiss- Mayhew, who says, "I felt like I was kind of an expert before. I've been in Girl Scouts for a while." Today's Cookie Rally isn't just about fun and games, it's about rally- ing the troops ahead of their biggest annual fundraiser. Nationwide, about 200 million boxes of cookies are sold every year, continuing a tradition that started in 1917 when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Okla., baked and sold Street Sense by Renee Cordes, Mainebiz deputy editor, is a monthly column offering on-the-ground glimpses of small business life in Maine. Renee can be reached at rcordes @ mainebiz.biz Street Sense Smart cookies Girl Scouts learn the biz on Waterville's retail strip P H O T O / J I M N E U G E R P H O T O / J I M N E U G E R Alli Ward works on her lanyard at Smitty's Book Cellar. Parent volunteer Megan Boone leads a round of "Guess the Cookie" at the Incense & Peppermints candy store in Waterville to prepare Girl Scouts for cookie-selling season.

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