Does your troop sell popcorn each year?

I just received our council's '2007 Popcorn Sales Guide' yesterday. It's eleven pages of instructions, tips, and mostly encouragement to participate - win prizes, get a scholarship, have a great program, support the council, have fun, ... and so on.

There are 12 product items, ranging in price from $9.00 to $50.00 Yes, that's $50.00 for a tin of popcorn - covered in chocolate, but still popcorn. In the past few years, the prices of the popcorn have really popped. We used to have a $5.00 item and $35.00 was the biggest.

It's pretty difficult to encourage scouts to sell items that are priced about 3 times what they are worth. The $14.00 microwave popcorn has 15 packets in it. I can buy a 3-pack at the grocery store today for $1.19 - that's $6.25 instead of $14.00 In the BSA fundraising guidelines, we are supposed to offer a product or service in a way that customers get their money's worth. That no longer seems to be the case with popcorn sales.

Our troop sells popcorn at the same time we sell wreaths. Every year for the past 5 years, the percentage of sales from popcorn has steadily decreased while sales of wreaths has held steady. Neighbors like supporting the scouts and they enjoy having beautiful wreaths delivered that are fairly priced. Unfortunately, I've had a few tell me the prices of the popcorn are out of line and they'll no longer purchase it for that reason.

I can't blame them.

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