Shoppers feeling pinch of high Thanksgiving grocery prices

Amityville resident Eugene Harvin and his family are doing things differently for Thanksgiving, as food costs this year rise at rates not seen since the 1970s.

The family is cutting down on the number of guests invited to dinner and will have more of a potluck-style meal, Harvin, 64, said Tuesday afternoon in the parking lot of the Walmart in Farmingdale.

“We’re spreading it around, so everybody won’t feel the burden of inflation ’cause things are more expensive,” he said.

Harvin and his family are among a growing share of Americans who are feeling the pinch of high inflation, which is affecting their Thanksgiving plans and budgets. 

A shopping cart with the holiday’s most-popular grocery items, including turkey, cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes, now costs an average of 14.2% more than the price a year ago, according to IRI, a market research company based in Chicago.

Groceries to feed 10 people gathered for a “classic Thanksgiving dinner” will cost an average of $64.05, a 20% increase from last year’s price, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 37th annual survey, results of which were released Wednesday.

The shopping list includes a 16-pound turkey, 14 ounces of cubed stuffing, 12 ounces of fresh cranberries, 3 pounds of sweet potatoes, 12 rolls and two frozen pie crusts, according to the Washington, D.C.-based trade group.

However, according to a LendingTree survey of 1,548 adult consumers in October, Thanksgiving dinner hosts plan to spend less on food and drinks this year — an average of $267 compared to $298.10 last year — because of growing financial strain. 

Factors driving costs up

There are several reasons for the grocery price hikes.

“The first bucket is the cost of the ingredients has gone up.  The whole commodity cost inflation since the Ukraine war started [in February], so the input costs are much higher for most manufacturers,” said Krishnakumar “KK” Davey, president of thought leadership for consumer-packaged goods and retail at IRI.

Also, rising production costs are a factor, experts said. 

“I … think the bigger story is food inflation as the costs to produce food, including turkey meat, has gone up significantly in 2022 relative to 2021. This is due to increases in the costs of [animal] feed, fuel, vet services, farm machinery, labor and packaging,” said Bradley Rickard, a professor of food and agricultural economics at Cornell University.

Also, the Avian bird flu has led to 50 million infected birds in the U.S dying of sickness or being euthanized since February, said Beth Breeding, a spokeswoman for the National Turkey Federation, a trade group based in Washington, D.C.  That number includes about 8 million turkeys, or 3% of the U.S. turkey production, but “there is no turkey shortage,” she said.

Still, fewer turkeys mean higher prices.

Food producers’ higher costs are getting passed on to supermarkets, which have passed some of the costs on to their customers.

At Stew Leonard’s seven grocery stores, which include two on Long Island, retail prices are up an average of 5%, “probably like half of what it should be,”  said Stew Leonard Jr., president of the Norwalk, Connecticut-based chain.

The chain is paying 40 cents per pound more for fresh turkeys, so it has raised its retail price 30 cents per pound — $2.99 compared to $2.69 for Thanksgiving 2021.

The four Holiday Farms supermarkets on Long Island are selling Bell & Evans fresh turkeys for $2.99 per pound, which is $1 more than the price a year ago, said Ray Negron, meat supervisor for the chain.

The grocer is selling Butterball and Shady Brook Farms fresh turkeys for $1.79 per pound, which is 80 cents more than the price a year ago, said Negron.

Holiday Farms' storewide prices are up an average of 10%, said owner David Mandell, who owns eight grocery stores on Long Island and in Queens.

No choice on prices

“We’re not necessarily making any more money.  But manufacturers are raising prices and we have no choice but to raise prices,” said Mandell, who said he sees customers responding by buying fewer products and cheaper brands.

Westbury resident Barbara Cipriano, 56, and her sisters typically have Thanksgiving dinner at their parents’ home but there will be changes in their shopping plans this year, she said.

“We have kind of split into separate weeks to go shopping so that we can afford it.  And, you know, going around different places, looking for different prices and, you know, it’s tough.  I was just at ShopRite and now I’m here at … Holiday Farms,” she said on Monday morning.

Many Americans are responding to the higher food prices by shopping earlier, trading down to cheaper brands and searching for discounts, retail and economic experts said.

Some Holiday Farms customers are trading down to cheaper substitutes for turkey, Negron said.

“They’re going more into like an oven stuffer roaster [chicken], or maybe like a cheaper cut of meat,” he said.

The average cost of groceries, or what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics refers to as “food at home,” was 12.4% higher in October than the cost a year earlier, said Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.  It was the highest year-over-year inflation for October since 1978, he said.

For the week ending Nov. 6, the national average price of a whole turkey was $1.39 per pound, a 14.2% increase from the same period a year earlier, according to IRI.

The national average price of pie/pastry filling was up 22.4% to $2.52 per pound, flour rose 31% to 86 cents per pound, butter and margarine were up 38.5% to $2.90 per pound, and cranberry sauce rose 18.1% to $2.17 per pound, according to IRI.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.com@ToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.