Thanksgiving dinner may not cost you as much as it did last year, but that’s only partly due to falling prices. It’s also because more Thanksgiving hosts are looking for sales, cutting back on non-essentials – and crossing people off the invite list.
The American Farm Bureau Federation is out with its annual Thanksgiving pricing survey. The silver lining in its report is that the cost of a traditional holiday feast for ten has fallen 5%, to $58.08 this year. But the unfortunate reality is that the total is still 19% higher than five years ago, the last Thanksgiving we enjoyed before the Covid pandemic and subsequent inflation.
Of the eleven items on the AFBF’s menu, seven cost less than last year – sweet potatoes, frozen peas, a vegetable tray of carrots and celery, pumpkin pie mix, pie crusts, whole milk and the centerpiece, the turkey. The average price for a 16-pound turkey is now $25.67, or $1.60 per pound, down 6% from last year. The remaining four menu items – dinner rolls, fresh cranberries, whipping cream and cubed stuffing – rose in price, but not enough to offset the overall price decline.
That’s the good news. Additional good news, according to the AFBF, is that the rate of food inflation is now far lower than that of other everyday necessities like transportation, housing and electricity. So don’t get depressed about the cost of Thanksgiving dinner, because it pales in comparison to how much you’re paying for everything else!
Try as it might to put a positive spin on the fact that we’re still spending nearly 20% more for a meal than we were before Covid, the AFBF acknowledges that “consumers are exhausted from years of inflation, and it will take more than the past two years’ improvements to ease the pain.”
So some shoppers are looking for ways to trim their Thanksgiving spending even further. Kroger recently surveyed shoppers and found that less than half expect to splurge for Thanksgiving. Most are looking for savings – 71% said they plan to look for sales, deals and coupons before shopping for their Thanksgiving needs.
A separate Circana survey also found that shoppers are looking for deals – and they may have some better luck finding them this year. Circana estimates that shoppers will buy about half of the items they need on sale this year. That’s twice as many sale items as they were likely to find two years ago, when retailers and manufacturers cut back on promotions, even over the holidays. But deep discounts are still harder to find than they were back in 2019.
A third survey from Deloitte found that 44% of those hosting Thanksgiving dinner are concerned about the cost of the event. 30% said they expect to serve a “less fancy meal” this year, featuring lower-cost items or fewer items than usual. About the same percentage said they will save money by leaving more friends or relatives off their invite list this year.
So there’s still a lot to be thankful for this year – falling prices, more Thanksgiving grocery promotions, and the fact that we’re no longer in the thick of a deadly pandemic that put a damper on past years’ Thanksgiving celebrations. And if your Thanksgiving hosts are among those trimming back on their invite list this year – you can be thankful if you’re among the ones who make the cut.
Image source: Megan Watson on Unsplash
