The cost of a Thanksgiving meal is down 2 to 3 percent from last year. Sorry, it is actually up 0.6 percent. And if you go to Walmart, its Thanksgiving meal costs $3 per person less than last year’s, but includes different items and fewer of them.
Welcome to the Thanksgiving food cost wars, where retailers are competing for shoppers, economists are competing for attention and politicians are competing for narrative. Everyone is using different numbers, leaving Americans confused about a basket of specialized items purchased at a particular time of year.
“I really feel like it is such a shell game,” said G. Robert McDougall, the former chief executive of the Southern California grocery chain Gelson’s. “Every company is going to handle it a little different, but all are coming from the same premise: They want the customer to come in and do their big shop.”
Groceries are the most challenging thing for Americans to afford, according to a recent Politico poll. At the same time, consumer confidence is declining, and with both political parties talking about affordability, the cost of a Thanksgiving meal is taking on outsize importance this year.
Even the White House has seized on the Thanksgiving meal to show that the Trump administration has helped lower costs. It put out several news releases about Thanksgiving prices, celebrating meal deals at Walmart, Target, Aldi and Lidl that are cheaper than last year, and have pointed to Wells Fargo and Farm Bureau reports that found Thanksgiving costs are down.
“Public and private data all paint a consistent picture: the Trump administration’s policies have cooled inflation, which is now trending towards an annualized 2.5 percent rate,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, adding that the rate is, “half the average inflation rate” under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“The prices of many household essentials such as eggs, butter, gas, fresh fruit, and rice have come down,” he said.
Prices on most of those items have declined, though only slightly, and the cost of other staples, like milk, tomatoes and electricity have increased since President Trump took office. Overall, the cost of food at home has risen 2.7 percent over the last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The White House and the retailers don’t explain that the cheaper Thanksgiving meals for sale differ markedly from what they offered last year. It’s similar to comparing apples to oranges, or in this case, corn muffin mix to mac and cheese.
Target’s Thanksgiving meal costs $4.99 per person, just 1 cent less than last year’s $5 per person. Five of the items on the menu remain the same, but last year’s Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and Del Monte green beans have been replaced by store brand French bread and frozen corn.
Walmart is selling a 10-person meal for less than $4 per person. The retailer’s meal last year fed eight people for under $7 per person, but included more items, more name brand items and a could include a larger turkey. John Furner, chief executive of Walmart U.S., said on an earnings call that its Butterball turkeys are $0.97 a pound, the lowest price since 2019.
Target declined to comment, and Walmart did not respond to a request for comment.
Food inflation was low and steady for most of the 2010s, and so it receded in importance for consumers, said Michael Swanson, the chief agricultural economist at Wells Fargo. But the Covid-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine and the Trump administration’s trade war upended that stability, bringing it back to the forefront of consumer’s minds.
The cost of a Thanksgiving meal can vary widely depending upon where in the country you are and which brands are purchased. Wells Fargo says a Thanksgiving meal for 10 made with name-brand ingredients will cost $95, while one made with store brand ingredients will cost $80. The Farm Bureau, a farming lobbying organization, says a meal in the Northeast will cost $60.82, while one in the South will cost $50.01.
Meal prices are not necessarily declining because items are less expensive. Mr. McDougall, the former grocery store executive, said stores might forgo making a profit on some items, while trying to eke out a small margin on others. And all of them price their Thanksgiving turkey as low as possible.
“At Gelson’s we didn’t sell things below cost, but we were much closer to cost on some key items if we felt we could justify a bigger basket with it,” he said.
Mr. McDougall said most grocers make their orders for Thanksgiving turkeys nine to 12 months in advance. Buying the right number of birds is a tricky balance. Stores do not want to buy too many, and then have to offer weeks of turkey sandwiches at the deli counter, but they also do not want to buy too few and run out. If they do run out, they’ll have to stock their stores with turkeys purchased from the spot market, which charges much more.
That’s why Deloitte, the consulting company, reported that Thanksgiving prices are 0.6 percent higher because they found that store turkey prices are slightly higher.
According to Purdue University, wholesale prices for turkey are up 75 percent from last year, largely because of diminished supply from avian flu, which could signal turkeys will be more expensive next Thanksgiving, as grocers will lock in those contracts in just a few months.
The economists behind some Thanksgiving meal reports were careful to say they offered data about a select group of products at a specific time, which don’t offer insights to food prices more broadly.
“This is an informal snapshot of current prices,” said Faith Parum, a Farm Bureau economist. “During the first full week of November we ask what prices are right then.” She said the report showed that food prices were returning to a “normal trend line” after highs in 2022, but that it doesn’t necessarily say anything broader about overall food inflation.
The Farm Bureau has shoppers fan out to stores across the country and record the prices of 11 items, the same 11 items it has measured for 40 years. They can go to any grocery store they like and buy any brand, but they do not take into account coupons, sales or deals, such as those found at BJ’s Wholesale Club, where shoppers who spend $150 during the first 10 days of the month can get a free Butterball turkey.
Wells Fargo’s report comes from millions of actual purchases, so they can compare exact products from one year to the next. But some major grocery chains, like Walmart, do not participate.
Consumers are doing their best to balance quality and cost. Laney Boyle did her Thanksgiving shopping the weekend before the holiday at a Safeway in Castro Valley, Calif. She had two frozen turkeys in her cart: A small Safeway brand one, and a much larger Butterball turkey.
The store brand turkey was quite cheap, just $0.39 cents a pound, one per customer with a Safeway loyalty card. Ms. Boyle was buying it for her neighbor. “Spending somebody else’s money, I thought that was a good idea,” she said.
When it came to her own turkey, however, she said she didn’t pay much attention to the $1.99 per pound price. She’s tried organic turkeys, she’s tried brining them, but she’s settled on cooking a frozen Butterball inside of an oven bag.
“It’s the best,” she said. “It always comes out perfect.”
Kevin Draper is a business correspondent covering the agriculture industry. He can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].
The post How Much Will Thanksgiving Dinner Cost? It Depends on Whom You Ask. appeared first on New York Times.
