The cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for ten people will be lower for a third straight year, thanks to steep discounting in turkey prices, though about half the items on a typical US holiday table are pricier than last year, a survey shows.
The American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual supermarket survey estimates the holiday meal for 10 will cost $55.18 this year, a 5 per cent drop from 2024 and the lowest since 2021.
This figure, however, remains 13 per cent higher than the bureau’s “classic meal” – featuring a 16-pound turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, sweet peas, dinner rolls, and pumpkin pie – cost in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent inflation surge.
The centrepiece turkey itself is 16.3 per cent less expensive this year, driving the overall saving.
The Farm Bureau stated: “While the wholesale price for fresh turkey is up from 2024, grocery stores are featuring Thanksgiving deals and attempting to draw consumer demand back to turkey, leading to lower retail prices for a holiday bird.”
While items like stuffing and dinner rolls were also cheaper, roughly half the foods for the meal saw price increases.
Notably, frozen peas (+17.2 per cent), sweet potatoes (+37 per cent), and a fresh vegetable tray (+61.3 per cent) were significantly more expensive than last year.
The Farm Bureau’s cost estimate – the result of volunteer shoppers fanning out across the country during the first week of November – comes to about $5.52 a person.
The Farm Bureau has estimated costs for the same menu since 1986.
Food costs have become a major political issue in the U.S. as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches on the heels of a record-long government shutdown that has disrupted air travel for weeks.
Inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index in September, the latest data available owing to the government shutdown, was running at 3.0 per cent annually, the highest since January.
The data shows a number of household food staples were up by the most in three years that month and more than half the items in the index were rising in price by more than 3 per cent.
Feeling heat from households pinched by inflation pressures, President Donald Trump last week rolled back the steep tariffs he had imposed on hundreds of different imported food items, including beef, bananas and coffee, after his Republican Party suffered losses in the first elections held since his return to the White House in January.
