Topline
While food inflation has largely slowed, some items integral to a Thanksgiving meal have seen slight increases, and some name brand options are actually less expensive than store brand options this year—though it is still overall less expensive to purchase store brand fixings, according to a new report by the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute.
Some Thanksgiving staples saw price increases this year while others, like turkey, stayed largely … [+]
Key Facts
A Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people, including turkey, stuffing, salad, cranberries, dinner rolls and pumpkin pie, would cost $90 if using name brand products—a 0.5% decrease from last year—and would cost $73 if using store brand products, which is a 2.7% from last year.
Turkey, the centerpiece of most Thanksgiving meals, will cost about the same as they did last year—and while store brand turkey prices are increasing slightly and name brand turkey prices are decreasing, a store brand turkey is still the more-budget friendly option.
Boxed stuffing mix is one of the food items seeing a price increase this season—due to the trailing costs of labor and transportation—with name brand stuffing up 9% compared to last year and store brand up 3%.
Dinner rolls, both name brand and store brand, also saw a 3% increase this year as items across the bakery are still reeling from cost increases related to COVID-19, Wells Fargo said.
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Surprising Fact
Cranberries, another Thanksgiving classic, are one of the items where a name brand purchase is less expensive than store brand. A 12 ounce name brand bag of cranberries is down 3% from this time last year, while a store brand bag of the same size is up 6%—making the name brand product the easy option for most consumers.
Tangent
The annual Wells Fargo report also looked at the cost of drinks, though they weren’t included in the overall cost estimate of a meal for 10. Beverage prices this year are “all over the place,” with beer and wine seeing price increases of 3.3% and 2.4%, respectively, but two-liter soft drink bottles seeing a 10.8% decrease. Twelve-ounce soda cans saw a 1.7% increase, though, so the experts recommend opting for the two-liter bottles to “help balance the budget” and account for the alcohol increases.
Key Background
The deceleration of food prices that’s been seen throughout the year is expected to continue through the end of 2024, according to the latest Consumer Price Index data. From August to September—the last available data—food saw a 0.4% increase. In 2024, prices for all food are expected to increase a total of 2.3%, with food-at-home prices increasing 1.2% and food-away-from-home prices increasing 4.1%. The 2024 increases are down significantly from what was seen in 2020 when food-at-home-prices increased 3.5%, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture said was “largely driven by a rapid increase in food-at-home prices following the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic.” Food price increases continued through 2022, which saw a 9.9% increase, and began to steady in 2023, which saw food prices increase 5.8% but slow generally as “economy-wide inflationary pressures, supply chain issues, and wholesale food prices eased.”
What To Watch For
What happens to food prices after the election. Former president—and now president-elect—Donald Trump has promised to lower grocery prices. He hasn’t provided much detail on how he intends to do that—and at least one expert has cautioned presidents don’t really have that much impact on food prices in the short term—but said at one town hall he would treat farmers better in an effort to lower prices, and suggested he would limit food imports to lower prices.