Grocery chains are vying for a place on Thanksgiving tables with turkey dinner specials and store brands

NEW YORK (AP) – With Thanksgiving less than two weeks away, Walmart, Target, Aldi and other grocers are vying for a spot on Christmas tables with turkey dinner specials and other campaigns to tempt Americans which has not recovered from recent food price inflation.

Walmart, the nation’s largest food retailer, first collected the production of a traditional turkey feast into a meal deal three years ago. This year, the 29-item deal, which includes a frozen turkey and side ingredients, costs less than $55 and is meant to serve eight. That works out to less than $7 per person.

The target’s four-person version costs $20, $5 less than the company’s 2023 Thanksgiving meal, and includes a frozen turkey, stuffing mix and canned green beans and canned jellied cranberry sauce. Aldi’s offers a frozen one Butterball turkey with gravy mixture and pumpkin ingredients for pumpkin pie and ingredients for side dishes such as sweet potato casserole. The German-owned supermarket chain priced it at $47, saying it was less than it took for the same items in 2019.

Meijer, with more than 500 supercenters in the Midwest, jumped into the fray last week by offering a frozen turkey for 49 cents a pound or less and a Thanksgiving family meal for $37 for a group of four to six.

It is difficult to compare the respective menus to determine which represents the best value, as recommended serving sizes and contents vary. But the campaigns that were introduced earlier than ever and at a time when many households remain exposed at higher prices, emphasize the importance of Thanksgiving for merchants, analysts said.

While consumer perceptions of grocery prices are based on the price of staples like eggs and milk, “the Thanksgiving meal has essentially become a new benchmark,” said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe, a global marketing and communications firm.

It’s the reason for the second-biggest holiday meal for retailers behind the parties that accompany the winter holidays. Compared to an average, Thanksgiving meal purchases provided a $2.4 billion sales boost in the week before and after the holiday last year, market research firm Circana said. Christmas, Hanukah and New Year’s Day shopping brought stores a $5.3 billion increase in sales compared to an average week, Circana said.

Walmart launched its offer on October 14th, two weeks earlier than last year and plans to make it available through December 24th. The two bundles the retailer offered last year contained different items, but Walmart said this year’s select products cost 3.5% less.

Joan Driggs, a Circana vice president, expects shoppers to buy items on sale for half of what they need to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner meal. That is double the amount from 2022as retailers pulled back on promotions due to limited supplies left over from the coronavirus pandemic.

Consumers still aren’t seeing discounts as deep as those grocers trudged out in pre-pandemic 2019, Driggs said. To attract customers, retailers are therefore creating strategies such as meal packages that can “reduce stress” for shoppers by displaying the price per item. person, she said.

Angel Rosario-Sanchez, 24, a New Jersey resident who was at a Walmart store in Secaucus on Wednesday, said he planned to hold Thanksgiving with his friends, but hadn’t shopped for groceries yet. Seeing the large displays of Thanksgiving products in the store made him want to return to buy some.

“I always count on Walmart for deals,” said Rosario-Sanchez, who usually chooses food from Walmart’s lower-end, Great Value brand. “Inflation is too much and it needs to go back to where it was originally.”

In the past two years, Walmart, Target and others have seen price-conscious shoppers shift more of their purchases to store brands. In response, retailers have improved their selection or created new food brands.

Walmart in April launched Bettergoods, its largest food brand in 20 years in terms of breadth of merchandise, to appeal to younger customers who are not loyal to national brands and want chef-inspired foods that are more affordable price.

But store brands are not necessarily cheaper.

Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute, a team of national industry advisors that provides financial insights and research, compared the cost of store brands and national name brands for a typical Thanksgiving dinner. The name brand versions of cranberry sauce were less expensive than the store brands the team included, while the name brand pumpkin pies versus the store brand versions were the same price.

Robin Wenzel, the head of the Wells Fargo Institute, believes that the producers of some well-known brands realized that they “overshot” some of their post-pandemic price increases and are pulling back.

The Agri-Food Institute’s 10-person Thanksgiving menu includes turkey, stuffing, salad, cranberries, dinner rolls and pumpkin pie. Using all name brands would cost $90 this year, 0.5% less than last year. Preparing the same meal with store-brand food would cost $73, or 2.7% more than a year ago.

That allows customers to mix and match, Wenzel said.

The government’s latest snapshot of inflation showed that grocery prices rose just 0.1% from September to October and have risen just 1.1% over the past year. That brings some relief to consumers after food costs rose by about 23% over the past three years.

For Thanksgiving entrees and drinks, prices are dropping, but given the increase in food prices in recent years, consumers may or may not feel it.

A 15-item Thanksgiving meal costs an average of $65.51 this year, down nearly 3% from last year but 42% higher overall than in 2019, said retail information provider Datasembly. For example, a 12-ounce can of jellied cranberry sauce averaged $2.89, down 1% from a year ago, but still up 90% compared to 2019.

A 10-pound frozen turkey averages $10.40 this year, down 19% from 2023 but still 6% higher than in 2019, the data firm said. Prices for some Thanksgiving products are still rising: A 30-ounce box of pumpkin pie mix now costs an average of $5.56, up 6% from a year ago and nearly 70% more than five years ago, according to Datasembly.

Like many food retailers, Walmart put a mix of store and name-brand products in its Thanksgiving package. The meal deal includes Ocean Spray canned jellied cranberry sauce and green beans and dinner rolls from the in-house Great Value line. The package also includes a white whole frozen turkey from national brand Shady Brook Farms and fresh items like a 5-pound bag of russet potatoes.

Still, plenty will bypass the bundles at Walmart and elsewhere.

While visiting Walmart in Secaucus, New Jersey, Nadia Rivest, 70, said she had already shopped at the discount store to buy turkey, fish and chicken for her Thanksgiving meal. But she was only interested in buying fresh produce, not canned goods.

“I like red peppers, red tomatoes, anything fresh,” she said.