Make no mistake, Thanksgiving dinner is as affected by inflation as gasoline.
This year, consumers will pay almost 15% more for their holiday gathering than they did last year, according to various experts.
Farm Bureau Insurance reports the cost of a traditional Thanksgiving feast for 10 people this year will cost $53.31. While less than $10 per person, it is a 14% increase from last year’s average of $46.90.
The shopping list for Farm Bureau’s informal survey included turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and coffee and milk.
A spot survey of prices by Cowboy State Daily also revealed increases in the cost of the annual meal.
According to flyers from a Wyoming grocery store printed in 2020 and 2021, turkey prices have risen almost 10%. In 2020, the sale price of a turkey was 89 cents per pound — a figure that increased to 99 cents per pound this year.
The stuffing to accompany that turkey, meanwhile increased in price by more than 11% — from $1.50 per box in 2020 to $1.67 per box in 2021.
The cost of some items, such as canned cranberry sauce, canned yams, and 10-pounds bag of potatoes, stayed virtually the same, as did a store-bought pumpkin pie.
But a jar of Heinz gravy doubled in price, from $2 per jar to $3.99, and the price of a tube of crescent rolls increased from $1.49 to $1.99.
“Several factors contributed to the increase in average cost of this year’s Thanksgiving dinner,” said American Farm Bureau Federation Senior Economist Veronica Nigh. “These include dramatic disruptions to the U.S. economy and supply chains over the last 20 months; inflationary pressure throughout the economy; difficulty in predicting demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and high global demand for food, particularly meat.”
Nigh added that the trend of consumers cooking and eating at home more often due to the pandemic led to increased supermarket demand and higher retail food prices in 2020 and 2021, compared to pre-pandemic prices in 2019.
