Thanksgiving dinner prices hit new high
Thanksgiving dinner prices are at an all-time high.
Turkey – king of the Thanksgiving feast – is the most expensive it has been since 2015. This year, the average bird costs $1.50 per pound, a 24% increase over last year’s turkey prices.
“The overall Thanksgiving market basket – about 45% of the cost is related to the cost of turkey,” Veronica Nigh, senior economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in a video report released last week.
Nigh said Thanksgiving hosts with 10 dinner guests can expect to spend about $54 on groceries, roughly $6 a person.
That’s up 14% from last year’s average Thanksgiving dinner cost.
One can’t attribute the soaring dinner costs to hefty turkey price tags alone. Everything from sides (dinner rolls are up 15%) to frozen pie crusts (up 20%) and dessert (canned pumpkin is up 7%) costs more this year.
“Inflation has definitely made sales numbers higher. The costs have gone up,” said Jeff Duritza of Duritza Enterprises, which owns the Shop ‘n Save stores in Canonsburg and Washington. “A lot of that’s just the manufacturers aren’t having the deals. It seems like a lot of manufacturers, their deals aren’t as deep. Usually there are better buys for the holidays. If we pay more, we gotta charge more.”
Duritza said he hasn’t noticed the increased pricing on frozen pie crusts, butter or whipped cream making headlines nationally, but many items are a bit costlier this year than they were in 2020.
“Cranberry sauce is a little higher. The name-brand canned milk was a little higher. (Boxed) stuffing and gravy, a little higher. It seems like where the production is a little more labor-involved,” prices are higher or there are shortages.
The increased holiday meal cost from 2020 to 2021 is the largest recorded since the Farm Bureau began its large meal survey in 1986.
“Several factors contributed to the increase in an average cost of this year’s Thanksgiving dinner. These include dramatic disruptions to the U.S. economy and supply chains over the last 20 months, inflationary pressure throughout the economy, difficulty in predicting demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and a high global demand for food,” Nigh said.
The increased costs aren’t going unnoticed by local shoppers preparing for Thanksgiving.
“I have been stocking up on baking supplies, especially, and spices, because I noticed they were getting more expensive back in September,” said Michele Wilson, a mother of five from Venetia. “I started buying more of those things every time I went to the store.”
Wilson hasn’t started her official Turkey Day shopping yet – she’ll do that next week – but many other locals purchased birds months ago.
“They did start shopping way earlier,” Duritza said. “We sold a lot of turkeys four, five weeks ago. I think that people were just nervous that we wouldn’t have them. The products that we had in the store early enough definitely sold a lot more than last year.”
Wilson and other people who didn’t flock to the grocery store weeks ago for a turkey might be rewarded with lower prices – Nigh said turkeys were about 88 cents per pound the week of Nov. 12 – but the lower costs come at a price to business.
“I’m losing more money,” Duritza said. “Turkeys are the same but my cost went up. We’re competitive with everybody. You roll the dice; everybody’s essentially close to the same price. We’re losing more.”
Wilson said she, too, feels the strain of inflation. Since September, she increased her monthly grocery budget by 20%.
“I definitely have concerns about my grocery bill,” said Wilson, who is expecting 10 guests to gather around the Thanksgiving table Thursday. “I’ve always set aside a set budget for the holiday meals, and I’m hoping that that budget is going to be enough.”
For now, she’s got all the usual dishes on her Thanksgiving menu, and she isn’t planning on subbing or scrapping any holiday staples.
“I also just feel like Thanksgiving this year is the day that all my kids are going to be around, so I’m going to figure out a way to cover that expense,” she said.