Your Thanksgiving Dinner Costs Will Be A “Mixed Bag Of Savings & Squeezes”

US consumers are heading to grocery stores, butcher shops, and local farms in the coming days to gather supplies ahead of Thanksgiving dinner next Thursday. A new report finds that costs are marginally lower for the second year in a row but remain elevated since the Biden-Harris administration ignited the inflation storm.

The annual American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) Thanksgiving dinner survey found that the average Thanksgiving dinner for ten people will cost about $58.08, down 5% from last year. However, this is still 19% higher than five years ago.

“While consumers are getting some much-needed relief after years of elevated retail prices, these grocery bills also reflect some hard conversations around the dinner table for farm and ranch families,” AFBF wrote in the report. 

AFBF noted:

The classic dinner’s grocery bill is a mixed bag of savings and squeezes. Seven items dropped in price this year, including turkey, sweet potatoes, frozen peas, a vegetable tray of carrots and celery, pumpkin pie mix, pie crusts and whole milk. However, the remaining four items –dinner rolls, fresh cranberries, whipping cream and cubed stuffing – rose in price.

Prices for ham, Russet potatoes and frozen green beans were added to the survey in 2018 to reflect more Thanksgiving favorites, with all of them showing a year-over-year reduction in price. When including the additional items, the meal cost rose to $77.34, or $7.73 per person, with more leftovers, of course. The updated Thanksgiving dinner nearly doubled the cost savings of the classic basket – an 8.7% decrease in price from 2023.

Turkey – Carving the Grocery Bill

Over the span of the AFBF Thanksgiving survey, turkey has accounted for an average of 43% of the total dinner cost. This year is right on the mark – a 16-pound turkey accounts for 44.2% of the classic 10-person feast. Given its large share of the total dinner bill, differences in the grocery bill year-over-year closely follow the change in turkey prices. This year’s 6% decrease in turkey prices is a bit of an anomaly. According to USDA’s Turkeys Raised report, farmers raised 205 million turkeys in 2024, down 6% from last year and the lowest since 1985. Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza is responsible for the decline in turkeys raised. Typically, fewer turkeys would mean an increase in price, but demand for turkey fell in 2024. USDA estimates per capita demand for turkey is 13.9 pounds per person, down a pound from 2023. This drop in demand has caused prices to fall.

Geographically, AFBF found that Thanksgiving dinners in the western part of the country will be the most expensive, at $67.05.

AFBF continued to point out that consumers remain frustrated with food inflation:

Even though the price tag for this year’s Thanksgiving meal is down 5%, it’s still up nearly 20% from just five years ago. Consumers are exhausted from years of inflation, and it will take more than the past two years’ improvements to ease the pain.

The modest improvements in the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner are nothing to cheer about. The multi-year inflation storm has crushed middle-class and working-poor households and even rich folks have traded down to Walmart. In other words, the standard of living imploded under Biden-Harris.