CHICAGO — For months, consumers have been hearing they’ll need to shop early to keep supply chain issues from playing Scrooge with holiday gift-giving. Some are heeding that advice when shopping for Thanksgiving feasts, too.
About 400 people have ordered turkeys from Paulina Market — twice the number of orders the Lakeview butcher shop and specialty grocer would usually have this early in November, said owner Bill Begale.
“We have Christmas orders already, which is rare,” he said.
Begale isn’t worried about running short. He ordered more than 1,400 turkeys from a Minnesota farm in August. Grocery stores, too, say there’s no reason to panic: cranberries and canned pumpkin won’t be as scarce as toilet paper and hand sanitizer were at the start of the pandemic. Still, industry experts say people should avoid waiting until the last minute to shop, and expect to pay more.
Veronica Nigh, senior economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, said she would expect the cost of a typical Thanksgiving dinner to increase roughly in line with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 3 percent to 4 percent forecasted rise in food prices for the year.
Last year, the national average cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 with a 16-pound turkey, sides and homemade pumpkin pie was $46.90, according to the Farm Bureau’s annual survey. This year’s estimate is not yet available, but a 3.5 percent increase would add $1.64 to the price.
The turkey is the most expensive item on the Farm Bureau’s shopping list, accounting for about 40 percent of the total cost last year, and it’s also likely to see the biggest price increase this year.
A 10.4 percent increase in meat, poultry and fish prices drove the Consumer Price Index for food up 4.5 percent in September compared with the same month last year. Poultry prices didn’t spike as much as other meats but still rose 6.1 percent.
As of late last month, the wholesale price for frozen turkeys weighing between 8 and 16 pounds was roughly 13 percent higher than last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Turkey production has been declining over the past couple years while demand is up as more consumers have been cooking at home during the pandemic, pushing prices up, said Wells Fargo senior vice president and agribusiness consultant Kevin Bergquist.
Manufacturers are also facing higher costs. Tight staffing has pushed wages up and shortages of truck drivers have led to transportation bottlenecks, he said.
It’s not just meat and turkey. First Slice Pie Cafe, with shops in Ravenswood Manor and Andersonville, is paying more for some ingredients, such as condensed milk and pumpkin, which First Slice’s supplier now considers a more expensive special order item, said catering coordinator Nicole Mancha. They’re also spending more to send drivers to pick up items from alternate vendors when their usual suppliers are sold out.
First Slice had to raise prices by about a dollar a pie, though that doesn’t fully cover its cost increases, Mancha said. Large pies, serving 10 to 12 people, cost between $26 and $33.
At this point, First Slice isn’t limiting the number of pumpkin pies people can order for Thanksgiving, but it isn’t taking special requests for some pies not on its Thanksgiving menu, such as banana cream.
“It’s hard enough to get the product we need without worrying about additional things,” Mancha said.
Supply disruptions
The foods themselves usually aren’t in short supply. But ongoing supply chain woes disrupt the process of getting products to store shelves, from labor issues at food manufacturers and transportation companies to shortages of components such as packaging materials.
After a year of scaled-back festivities, more families will be planning big get-togethers, boosting demand for Thanksgiving items, said Peter Goldsmith, professor and director of the Food and Agribusiness Management Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
While consumers shouldn’t be concerned about shortages, “don’t wait until Wednesday night,” he said.
Some of Pete’s Fresh Market’s suppliers have put items such as pie crusts, dinner rolls, cream cheese, cranberry sauce and canned pumpkin and pineapple on allocation, which means Pete’s isn’t getting as much of those items as it wants, even though the company placed orders months ago, grocery buyer Leno Asuncion said in an email.
The company works with multiple vendors but has still been “challenged” to make sure shelves are stocked for Thanksgiving, he said.
Buyers and suppliers at Trader Joe’s have been “working tirelessly to keep our holiday products in stock for as long as we can, as consistently as we can,” a spokesperson said in an email. Still, retailers of all kinds are facing supply chain issues and when demand for certain items increases, “product shortages are unfortunately a possibility.”
Some businesses said they’re working to head off supply issues by ordering early.
Chris Dallas, owner of HarvesTime Foods in Ravenswood, said his turkey supplier wants orders in 10 days before Thanksgiving — earlier than usual — but everyone who orders before the deadline will get one.
The challenge is guessing how customers’ plans to celebrate will shape shopping lists.
“A lot of people are getting together and really doing it up,” he said. “We don’t know what that’s going to translate to when it comes to customers looking to buy things.”
Hoosier Mama Pie Co., with shops in East Ukrainian Village, Ravenswood and Evanston, plans to finalize its ingredient orders for Thanksgiving pies this week and work ahead as much as possible, filling their freezers with crusts, said assistant general manager Sally Arenberg.
One location already sold all the Thanksgiving pies available for advance orders, though more will be available for walk-up customers.
Hoosier Mama hasn’t been able to get its preferred brand of gingersnaps, used in some pie crusts, since August, Arenberg said. The company found other options, but lemon puree has been tougher. Their usual brand is dealing with labor shortages, and some of the substitutes they found are now sold out too.
“We need to be able to give vendors a heads up. … It’s just more careful planning,” she said.
Sunset Foods, with five stores in the north suburbs, ordered its Thanksgiving turkeys several months earlier than usual because the farm warned it was having trouble hiring workers, said Dan Humphrey, the store’s director of meat and seafood.
The turkeys are arriving and he isn’t worried about shortages. Canned ham, on the other hand, is running low, because manufacturers having trouble keeping up with demand tend to cut items that are less popular or more labor intensive.
But Sunset Foods feels like it’s in a good spot, especially now that a couple items they were waiting for, such as canned pumpkin and Nestle chocolate chips, have arrived, said grocery buyer Chris Hanson.
“People should not panic,” said Sunset Foods spokeswoman Sarah Hanlon. “It might be a different brand or size, but everyone’s going to find what they need for a traditional Thanksgiving.”
