Jacques of all Trades

today:How the Girl Scouts built their $700 million cookie empire

Of the millions of boxes sold every year, the most current breakdown of sales and revenue by variety looks like this:

1. Thin Mints — $175 million
2. Samoas (Caramel deLites) — $133 million
3. Tagalongs (Peanut Butter Patties) — $91 million
4. Do-si-dos/Savannahs (Peanut Butter Sandwiches) — $71 million
5. Trefoils (Shortbread) — $63 million
6. Other Varieties — $167 million

Thin Mints deserve that #1 spot.

Completely unsurprising that Thin Mints and Samoas make up nearly half of all Girl Scout cookie sales. I am actually somewhat surprised it’s not even more!

The old barn-wood strategy

Peck of the Day | Regretsy

nickdouglas:

You want to sell that chicken bone from lunch? Just shoot it on a piece of old barn wood, and some goofball will buy it. It doesn’t matter how worthless it is. If it’s on barn wood, someone will want it so they can put it next to their empty birdcage.

Here is a stunning visualization of the collapse of the music industry from Bain. As you can see, the growth of digital sales is not doing enough to offset the death of the CD. (Chart via Peter Kafka, who spotted it on Flickr.) (via CHART OF THE DAY: The Death Of The Music Industry)

“Are you sure you don’t want a sweet potato?”

(On the path up to the Perfume Pagoda, Vietnam — Jacques and Liz’s Asian Adventure)

Balloon seller, Hanoi 

(Scenes from Jacques and Liz’s Southeast Asian Adventure)

Pennsylvania to reform alcohol sales by introducing wine vending machine, with a catch…

Dear state alcohol boards, Rube Goldberg called, and he wants his machine back:

The vending machine dispenses bottles of wine like a soda machine does, but there are a few hoops to jump through before a purchase can be made.

Here’s how it works. A customer inserts a driver’s license and then looks into a camera. Someone at a call center makes a quick judgment about if the person on camera is the same person on the driver’s license. Then, the customer must breathe into a Breathalyzer. According to the NY Daily News, state officials say the whole process takes 20 seconds. (via Wine vending machine complete with breathalizer | MNN - Mother Nature Network)

Or you could just allow grocery stores to sell beer or wine, and have the cashier check ID.  Or you could continue your hodgepodge “you can buy a six-pack in a bar, or you can go to a beer distributor, or you can hit up a liquor store” system and add something else that nobody’s asking for.  And to top it off:

 there isn’t a single Pennsylvania wine being offered in these machines. There are more than 100 wineries in the state, but not a single one of the state’s wines is being offered in any of the 53 options per machine.  

Not that PA wines are great shakes — but you’d think that a revenue generator might want to generate some revenue for local small businesses, right?

(h/t Jack)