Here's something to be thankful for: The price of turkey and stuffing is down from this time last year.
That's welcome news to Kayla Jenkins, who's hosting 10 people for dinner on Thursday.
"Only 10," she says with a laugh. "I'm the oldest out of eight, so it's expected to have at least seven. At least."
Jenkins was pleasantly surprised by the prices she found at a Giant supermarket outside Washington D.C.
"They're not bad, honestly," she said. "It's inflation, but it's not terrible compared to how it was earlier."
Grocery prices soared during the pandemic and the years that followed. And they're still climbing faster than many people would like — up 2.7% for the 12 months ending in September.
But a survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation found the average price of food for a Thanksgiving feast is about 5% lower this year than last, largely thanks to a steep drop in the price of turkey.
"We have a mega surplus of food"
Turkey is typically the most expensive item on the Thanksgiving table, but the Farm Bureau found the cost of whole frozen turkeys was down 16% from last year.
"What that tells us is that we have a mega surplus of food in this country," says food economist Michael Swanson of Wells Fargo. "We're just done harvesting the largest corn and soybean crop ever." Low grain prices make it cheaper to feed turkeys.
Wells Fargo's own forecast of Thanksgiving food prices also highlighted savings this year, although not as large as those in the Farm Bureau survey.
There was some fear of a spike in turkey costs after an outbreak of avian flu caused wholesale prices to jump this fall. But Swanson says major grocery chains lock in their prices with turkey producers far in advance. And many stores sell Thanksgiving turkeys at a deep discount to get shoppers in the door.
The Giant store where Jenkins was shopping advertised frozen birds for 27 cents a pound, so long as customers also buy a cartful of other items. The Wells Fargo economist was surprised.
"Wow!" Swanson said. "Absolutely wow! It costs a lot more than 27 cents a pound to get that bird in the freezer."
Costs are down for stuffing, dinner rolls and pie crust. Not the sweet potatoes, though
Falling wheat prices have also led to lower costs for stuffing, dinner rolls, and pie crust for the Thanksgiving spread.
The sweet potatoes to fill that pie are likely to be more expensive this year, due in part to hurricane damage in North Carolina, a big sweet-potato producer. Fresh vegetable prices are also up in the Farm Bureau's tally, but cranberry prices are down.
Shoppers can often save money by choosing store-brand products instead of big national brands. But that price gap has narrowed in recent years, as customers have become more cost-conscious and the big brands want to be competitive.
"The national brands are feeling the heat," Swanson says. "It's really, really hard to convince people these days that the national brand is worth the premium."
Cynthia Pearson, another shopper at Giant, chose store brands for some items on her shopping list. She's hosting dinner for five on Thursday.
"I could go store brand, because I'm usually going to doctor it up somehow," she says. "Put my own little touch and taste on it."
While the price of some Thanksgiving staples has fallen in the last year, they're still higher than they were before the pandemic. Pearson said she hopes to stretch any savings as far as possible.
"We're going to eat Thursday, Friday, it should all be gone by Sunday," she said. "You can't waste anything. This is not a year for that."
Just be thankful our national holiday is not built around beef, where prices have jumped nearly 15% this year.
"Just for our own interest, we prepared a prime rib menu to ballpark it," said Wells Fargo's Swenson. "That's an expensive menu."
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