Thanksgiving grocery costs to hit record high, retail experts predict

Madeline Carpentiere and her family have had a change of plans.

Seeing grocery prices rising in stores and expecting food shortages, the family is breaking with tradition by not cooking Thanksgiving dinner at home this year, said Carpentiere, of Old Bethpage.

"We're actually going to go to a [hotel] buffet at a fixed price. ... It would be cheaper," she said while at a Walmart Supercenter in Farmingdale on Thursday.

This year's home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner is likely to be the most expensive in the holiday’s history, retail experts predict.

"Food prices pretty much across the board are up significantly right now relative to the past few months and especially relative to a year ago," said James Bohnaker, an economist in the Boston office of IHS Markit, a London-based market information service.

Average prices for meat, poultry, fish and eggs in October were 11.9% higher than they were a year earlier, said Bohnaker, citing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index.

"The 12-month percent change … is among the highest 12-month growth of all time," he said.

Labor, transportation and supply chain shortages amid the COVID-19 pandemic are among the reasons, retail experts said.

"All of that is having a big increase in retailer costs, which they can no longer just absorb. So, they are being passed on in part to prices on the shelf," said Jon Hauptman, senior director of Inmar Intelligence, a retail industry analytics company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

At Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace, the costs of some staple items, especially canned goods, will increase by about 10%, due to suppliers’ cost increases, said Danielle Lanciotti, spokeswoman for the Farmingdale-based chain of nine Italian specialty stores in New York and New Jersey.

Uncle Giuseppe’s sells frozen turkeys, but its fresh, all-natural, free-range birds are significantly more popular, she said. The fresh-turkey price will remain unchanged from last year — $2.99 a pound, she said.

Product shortages are not expected as Uncle Giuseppe’s has diverse suppliers and "years of strong supplier relationships," she said.

Cost of feeding turkeys soars

Miloski’s Poultry Farm, which raises all-natural, free-range birds in Calverton, will have its normal number of turkeys this year, about 3,000, said Mark Miloski, co-owner of the 75-year-old family business.

But the difference this year is significantly higher operating expenses, he said.

"The feed cost has doubled since last year," he said.

So, the price of turkeys the farm sells was increased from $5.50 per pound last year to $6.

Last year, the average nationwide cost for groceries for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people was $46.90, including a turkey costing about $1.21 per pound, according to a 2020 survey conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The federation’s 2021 survey results are not available yet, but declining COVID infection rates and the widespread availability of vaccines will mean more people gathering in homes for Thanksgiving this year.

Consumers will shop for Thanksgiving earlier than usual because they expect there to be shortages, experts said.

"The good news is there actually is plenty of food in the system … but getting to the right place at the right time is challenging because of transportation and labor shortages," said Andy Harig, vice president of tax, trade, sustainability and policy development at the Food Marketing Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based trade group representing the food industry, including retailers and producers.

But shoppers will find less variety on grocery shelves, said Miguel I. Gómez, associate professor in Cornell University’s Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.

"For example, you will definitely find a whole turkey, but maybe not of the weight that you specifically want. Or you may not find the specific brand that you are looking for," he said.

An appetite for frozen birds

Anticipating that customers might shop early for turkeys this Thanksgiving, grocer Stew Leonard’s took an unprecedented action.

The retailer typically sells only fresh turkeys, starting in mid-November, for the holiday, but this year it bought a trailer-load of frozen turkeys — about 2,500 birds —– that it sold in October, said Stew Leonard Jr., president of the Norwalk, Connecticut-based chain of seven supermarkets, including two on Long Island.

The frozen birds sold out quickly, he said.

"What it sort of signaled to us is people are a little panicky about whether they’re going to get turkeys. They just maybe want to have a backup in their freezer," he said.

Not only did Stew Leonard’s turkey supplier reduce the grocer’s turkey order by 30% this year, but the retailer’s wholesale prices also were increased, Leonard said.

That led to Stew Leonard’s raising its prices for conventional fresh turkeys — from $1.69 per pound last year to $2.19 this year, he said.

However, for its free-range, antibiotic-free fresh turkeys, Stew Leonard’s lowered the price from $2.99 per pound to $2.69 to encourage more customers to try that version, he said.

"I will promise our customers they will get a turkey at Stew Leonard’s," he said.

Grocer Stop & Shop continues to see cost increases from its suppliers, particularly in meat, paper goods and grocery staples, said Stefanie Shuman, spokeswoman for the Quincy, Massachusetts-based supermarket chain, which has 51 supermarkets on Long Island.

The grocer will match competitors’ advertised prices on turkeys, she said. There will be purchasing limits on turkeys that are on sale.

"Stop & Shop stores are currently well-positioned for the holidays and we are not expecting to enact any product limits beyond those tied to sale items and other promotional prices," she said.

Cooking at home

Queens resident Zakaria Aunns, 40, who was shopping in Walmart on Thursday, said his family will have Thanksgiving dinner at home.

"We're going to have a regular dinner, but we're definitely going to cut back a bit," he said.

The family will buy a frozen turkey from a supermarket instead of a cooked turkey from Boston Market, he said. They also will use canned vegetables instead of fresh produce and have fewer desserts, he said.

"We're keeping it simple this year."

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

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.