For coffee drinkers who might consider dunking their Girl Scout cookies, Dunkin' Donuts, true to its name, has come up with a solution.
The coffee and doughnut chain is introducing coffees that have the flavor of Girl Scout cookies.
Dunkin' Donuts is introducing three Girl Scout cookies-inspired coffee flavors on Monday. The Thin Mints, Coconut Caramel and Peanut Butter Cookie javas will be available at participating Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants nationwide through May.
The trio will come in hot or iced coffee, latte, macchiato, frozen coffee and frozen chocolate forms.
"Our guests have come to expect and enjoy fun, innovative flavors from us and what could elicit more smiles than the iconic taste of Girl Scout Cookie inspired flavors in your favorite Dunkin’ Donuts coffee? It’s a natural fit and a powerful combination," Patty Healy, the brand's senior director of integrated marketing, said in a statement.
The news came seven weeks after Dunkin' Donuts trimmed menu offerings at its New England and upstate New York stores, a precursor for the nationwide scaling-back coming by the end of March.
This isn’t the first time well known food companies have partnered with the Girl Scouts on cookie-related foods.
Most recently was the December launch of yogurts by one of General Mills’ best-known brands: Yoplait. It created several cookie-themed yogurts through its Whips! sub-brand. They included Thin Mints; Peanut Butter Chocolate, also known as Tagalongs; and Yoplait Original Girl Scouts Caramel Coconut, better known as Samoas.
That two well-regarded brands -- Dunkin' Donuts and Girl Scouts -- would team up in this way makes sense to Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles-based branding strategy expert.
"The reason why they'd want to do this is to expand product usage through cross-marketing with a brand-compatible partner whose audience is similar," he said. "Overlapping markets now expose each brand with the explicit endorsement of the other brand, which is really good. You have credibility."
Canton, Mass-based Dunkin' Donuts has more than 12,400 restaurants in 46 countries, according to the company.