It’s the week of Thanksgiving and if you haven’t already gotten your turkey, you may be in for a challenge. The issue is not a lack of turkeys, the issue is turkeys are not as easy to get at the grocery store right now as they have been in years past. Simply because of supply chain congestion and labor shortages. Now, it will be a bit of a challenge to not just find a turkey in your price range, but a turkey that tastes good as well.
According to Vox, an estimated 46 million turkeys are eaten every Thanksgiving in the United States, and nearly 9 in 10 Americans eat turkey on the holiday. However, frozen turkey inventories are down 24 percent on their three-year average volumes, and production of turkeys is down compared to the average year. According to the Department of Agriculture’s Turkey Report, whole frozen turkeys already cost about 26 cents a pound more this year than they did last year.
For John Peterson, who now manages Ferndale Market in Minnesota, after his late grandparents began the farm together back in 1939, has had customers ask him lately whether he was going to run out of turkeys heading into Thanksgiving. His answer? “We don’t have any reason that we should run out of turkeys, we’re growing the same number of turkeys that we did a year ago.” Which for Ferndale Market, that is 150,000 turkeys per year. Peterson has however experienced challenges directly correlated with the supply chain issues caused by the pandemic. Feeding the turkeys has gotten more expensive, in part to the increasing corn and soybean costs. Labor shortages with the processors he works with have also struggled, and then there’s shipping. Peterson has felt the cost of getting anything moved around, immensely.
Interestingly enough, the size of the turkey plays a part in all of this. Last year, in the heart of the pandemic, many consumers had smaller gatherings, or none at all. With those variables, that meant that the amount of food, such as the size of the turkey, was going to be much smaller than in previous years. Now this year it’s basically a guessing game. Some families are gathering in larger groups, others are not. It does take some time for turkeys to grow, as well as grocery stores and distributors having to plan ahead, those directly involved in the supply chain process of this had to estimate what this year was going to look like.
Will Liao, owner of Queens Natural Meats in New York, told Vox that he had to decide on how many turkeys and what turkeys he needed back in August and then commit to purchasing them. His concern was ordering too many turkeys and then being stuck with them, which is why he placed the same order as last year, around 30 to 40 percent less than pre-pandemic. Peterson, said they’ve somewhat changed the pricing on their turkeys in their store and to wholesale customers, but did not increase prices enough to cover the full cost of rising expenses.
Every one is going to have to be a little more flexible with Thanksgiving this year. Being open to the idea of using a different brand if your favorite brand of stuffing or canned corn might not be available, opting for a ham instead of a turkey if turkeys are out at your store. And as always, remember to be nice to the workers while out shopping as they are doing the best they can under these circumstances. From all of us at Commerce Express , we would like to wish you a happy Thanksgiving!
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