Grocery chains vied for a place on Thanksgiving tables with turkey dinner deals and store brands

Category: (Self-Study) Business

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Walmart, Target, Aldi and other grocers competed for a place on holiday tables with turkey dinner deals and other promotions to tempt Americans who haven’t recovered from recent food price inflation.

Walmart, the nation’s largest food retailer, bundled the makings of a traditional turkey feast into a meal deal three years ago. This year, the 29-item offer, which included a frozen turkey and ingredients for side dishes, cost less than $55 (the exact total depends on the region) and was intended to serve eight. That calculates to less than $7 per person. Last year’s two bundles had different items, but Walmart said the total price of this year’s selected products was 3.5% lower than it was a year ago.

“Some of the holiday’s most special moments take place around the dinner table,” John Laney, executive vice president of food at Walmart U.S., said in a recent statement. “We are committed to offering customers even deeper savings.”

Target’s version for four people cost $20, $5 less than the company’s 2023 Thanksgiving meal, and included a frozen turkey, stuffing mix and canned green beans and canned jellied cranberry sauce. Aldi offers a frozen Butterball turkey with gravy mix as well as pumpkin ingredients for pumpkin pie and ingredients for side dishes like sweet potato casserole. The German-owned supermarket chain priced it at $47 and said that was less than what it charged for the same items in 2019.

Comparing the respective menus to determine which represented the best value is difficult since recommended serving sizes and contents vary. But the promotions, introduced earlier than ever and at a time when many households remained put off by higher prices, underscored the importance of Thanksgiving to grocers, analysts said.

While consumer perceptions of grocery prices are based on the cost of staples like eggs and milk, “the Thanksgiving meal has become essentially a new benchmark,” Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe, a global marketing and communications company.

It’s the occasion for the second-largest holiday meal for retailers behind the feasts that accompany the winter holidays.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Script

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[Brenda Holloway looking through groceries]

[Grocery cart moving between aisles]

Brenda Holloway (interview): “Now all of the prices have gotten so inflated that it’s kind of stressful because you got to figure out, okay, should I choose this item with this pricing or should I not? Because, you know, you have other bills and things that are coming up now that you used to be able to just come in the store and pick out whatever, you didn’t have to worry about it, but now you got to be more conscious with what you’re buying in the pricing on what you’re buying. So, it makes it a little stressful this year.”

[Price sign]

[Hams]

[Price sign]

Brenda Holloway (interview): “I’m still budget conscious, more so now than I have been throughout the years. I’m hoping that it’ll change next year. Let’s hope so. But for now, it’s a little. You just still have to be a little budget friendly and conscious on that.”

[Walmart]

[Walmart sign]

Brenda Holloway (interview): “I love Great Value because I can get more because the price is so low, but the quality is good. So, I like to shop for Great Value, it doesn’t matter what as long as it’s Great Value. I like. I love it. I’ll take it.”

[Mary Szymanski looking at groceries]

[Frozen turkey]

[Mary Szymanski looking at a price tag]

Mary Szymanski (interview): “It’s not a prime concern of mine. Maybe at a different time in my life when I had kids at home, it might have been more of one, but now I. I guess I’m an optimist. I feel that we’re going in the right direction or have been and that things have come down. Gas prices have come down.”

[Boneless ham]

[Shoppers walking by eggs]

Robin Wenzel (interview): “National brands I think coming out of Covid when they were having to increase prices with the increase of a lot of the input costs, they have since come down to a place where things are normalized and they’re stabilizing a bit.”

[Workers organizing groceries]

[Price of mashed potatoes]

Robin Wenzel (interview): “I would say the advice for the shopper this year is to be proactive. Shop around, look for the deals. There are a lot of retailers that are offering bundles out there, but you can also shop with store brands and a mixture of some name brands and still save money. We think this is the year where you have a little bit more flexibility with some of the name brand choices, as we’ve seen that pricing gap reduced.”

[Pumpkin pie price tag]

[Grocery cart moving between aisles]

This script was provided by The Associated Press.