Thanksgiving dinner cost jumps back up
Amid elevated food price inflation, the cost of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner shot up in 2021 following a sizable drop last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The American Farm Bureau Federation’s (AFBF) 36th annual survey reckoned the average cost of a Thanksgiving feast for 10 people at $53.31, up $6.41 from $46.90 in 2020. The 14% uptick came after a $2.01 decrease last year — to the lowest price tag for a Thanksgiving dinner since 2010 — and a one cent increase to $48.91 in 2019, before the pandemic.
“Several factors contributed to the increase in average cost of this year’s Thanksgiving dinner,” Veronica Nigh, senior economist at the Washington, D.C.-based American Farm Bureau Federation, said in a statement. “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 high global demand for food, particularly meat.”
Part of the higher Thanksgiving dinner cost — rising from less than to over $5 per person — reflects a more expensive turkey. This year, AFBF’s survey pegged the average cost of a 16-pound bird at $23.99, or about $1.50 per pound, up 24% from $19.39 ($1.21 per pound) in 2020 and $20.80 ($1.30 per pound) in 2019.
AFBF noted that timing impacted its turkey cost estimate this year. The bureau’s volunteer shoppers checked prices Oct. 26 to Nov. 8, about two weeks before most grocery retailers began merchandising whole frozen turkeys at much lower prices. Although the survey timeline remained consistent in 2021, AFBF said USDA Agricultural Marketing Service data show grocery stores starting to advertise lower feature prices for turkey later than usual this year. Also, the average per-pound feature price for whole frozen turkeys came in at $1.07 the week of Nov. 5 to 11 and 88 cents the week of Nov. 12 to 18, an 18% decrease in one week.
As a result, consumers who haven’t yet purchased a turkey should be able to find one at a lower cost than the survey average, AFBF reported. But the dollar ring for the rest of the Thanksgiving shopping basket still comes in higher than a year ago.
“Taking turkey out of the basket of foods reveals a 6.6% price increase compared to last year, which tracks closely with the Consumer Price Index for food and general inflation across the economy,” according to Nigh.