OPINION: Is there such a thing as too many cookies?

by Anon

Recently Salient ran an ad for the Cookie Time Christmas Cookie Sellers initiative, and I felt the call to action. The call to prevent other foolish youths from making the same mistake I know others did.

The ad for Cookie Time Christmas Sellers quotes the average earnings figure of $13,196 “(before tax and business expenses)”. The model runs pretty simply. Cookie Time allocates you an area of Wellington to sell your cookies in, and gives you a certain number of buckets of Christmas Cookies. You do a mix of “quick selling” (standing on the street with your stall), and trying to land bigger deals by talking to various businesses to see if they want to buy any.

But here’s the catch. Those “business expenses” include a pretty large asterix. Cookie Time gives you a sizable pile of buckets, and every bucket you don’t sell by the end of the two-month period, you have to buy back at retail price. Cookie Time keeps the majority of money from every sale. 

One anonymous person who I spoke to said they only made about $10,000 split between them and their sister, and that to do it they ended up being out selling most days across the entire holiday period. 

And you can only find this information out by talking to previous sellers. I went as far through the application process as I could, and had little success finding any information about the job. The actual concrete details of what you’re signing up to are hidden behind a form on the Cookie Time website that effectively acts as a CV. Until I’d get a contract sent over, I can’t get any of these details, and by that point, it’s realistically too late to back out. 

The whole process of being a seller is built around catching and keeping young entrepreneurs, lured with the promise of an even better performance the next year with your newfound experience. 

There is absolutely such a thing as too many Cookies. Unless you want boxes and boxes of Cookie Time Christmas Buckets, please, don’t sign up to sell them over this Christmas. Spend some time with your family instead. Grandma’s cookies are better, I guarantee it.