US Thanksgiving dinner cost drops for third year, Farm Bureau says

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(Reuters) -The cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 will be lower for a third straight year thanks to steep discounting in turkey prices, but about half the items that grace a typical U.S. holiday table are pricier than last year, a survey out on Wednesday shows.

The American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual supermarket survey of a Thanksgiving dinner estimated the cost of a holiday meal for 10 this year would be $55.18, down 5% from 2024 and the lowest since 2021.

That is still 13% higher than what the bureau’s “classic meal” – featuring a 16-pound turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, sweet peas, dinner rolls, pumpkin pie and other items – cost in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic and the relief efforts arising from it helped to stoke a surge in inflation.

“While the wholesale price for fresh turkey is up from 2024, grocery stores are featuring Thanksgiving deals and attempting to draw consumer demand back to turkey, leading to lower retail prices for a holiday bird,” the Farm Bureau said in a statement.

While the center-piece turkey was 16.3% less expensive this year, and items like stuffing and dinner rolls were also cheaper, roughly half the foods for the meal were up from 2024, with frozen peas (+17.2%), sweet potatoes (+37%) and a fresh vegetable tray (+61.3%) coming in notably more expensive than last year.

The Farm Bureau’s cost estimate – the result of volunteer shoppers fanning out across the country during the first week of November – comes to about $5.52 a person. The Farm Bureau has estimated costs for the same menu since 1986.

Food costs have become a major political issue in the U.S. as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches on the heels of a record-long government shutdown that has disrupted air travel for weeks.

Inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index in September, the latest data available owing to the government shutdown, was running at 3.0% annually, the highest since January. The data shows a number of household food staples were up by the most in three years that month and more than half the items in the index were rising in price by more than 3%.

Feeling heat from households pinched by inflation pressures, President Donald Trump last week rolled back the steep tariffs he had imposed on hundreds of different imported food items, including beef, bananas and coffee, after his Republican Party suffered losses in the first elections held since his return to the White House in January.

(Writing by Dan Burns; Editing by Neil Fullick)