Delicious Tastes of Home: Exchange Delivers Nearly 18,000 Cases of Girl Scout Cookies Overseas

The crew at Germany’s KMCC Exchange prepare thousands of boxes of Girl Scout cookies for shipment throughout Europe.

A taste of home goes a long way in the lives of military families serving in Europe and the Pacific. For more than 20 years, the Exchange has supported Girl Scout troops by shipping their famous cookies to military installations outside of the United States in time for their annual selling season.

In 2019, the Exchange delivered more than 10,000 cases of Girl Scout cookies throughout Europe and more than 7,500 cases in Japan and Korea.

Germersheim Distribution Center foreman Iseea Thomas and warehouse shuttle driver David Degroot volunteered to drive more than 50 miles in Friday rush-hour traffic on one of Germany’s busiest stretches of highway to deliver the cookies to the U.S. Army Garrison Baumholder so the Girl Scouts there would have them to sell over the weekend.

Embracing a core value

By delivering the cookies, Degroot and Thomas embraced the Exchange core value Family Serving Family.

“The Exchange is there for the military community, so if the community directly needs this assistance, and we can help, we are happy to do it,” Degroot said.

In 2019, the Exchange delivered more than 10,000 cases of Girl Scout cookies
throughout Europe and more than 7,500 cases in Japan and Korea.

Volunteering gave Degroot and Thomas an opportunity to see what a simple act of kindness can do for a small military community.

“Getting to see the impact it made on the customer is rewarding by itself,” Thomas said. “It gives us pride in what we do.”

Sakumoto Toshiro, a tractor-trailer driver at the Japan/Okinawa Distribution Center, loads Girl Scout cookies.

Distribution throughout Pacific

Associates at the Okinawa Distribution Center processed more than 2,500 cases of cookies and delivered them to Girl Scout troops at Kadena Air Base and Camps Courtney, Foster and Kinser. More than 3,000 cases were delivered to stores in mainland Japan, and nearly 2,000 cases were delivered to stores in Korea.

The Exchange starts receiving order requests from the Girl Scouts in late October to early November for the January-March selling season. The Exchange then places and processes the orders on behalf of the Girl Scouts in the United States.

The cookies are shipped either directly from the vendor’s bakery in Louisville, Ky., or through the Exchange’s Dan Daniel Distribution Center in Newport News, Va. It takes four to six weeks for the shipments to travel across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

“This program is at the top of our list every year,” said Connie Bartee, the Exchange’s food purchasing manager and coordinator for the Girl Scouts initiative. “It allows military children to participate in something they are missing back home while their parents serve where they are needed most.”