Where in Columbia can you get the cheapest Thanksgiving turkey?
Thinking about your Thanksgiving spread already? And wondering how much it’s going to cost?
Turkey Day is only a couple weeks away, and budget-conscious shoppers are already considering their options to put their biggest bird in front of grandma on the dinner table without breaking the bank along with the drumsticks.
The State surveyed a dozen local grocery stores to hunt down the best price for turkey.
The lowest price our reporters found was the store-brand turkey at Publix, retailing at 49 cents per pound. On a 32-pound bird, that works out to $15.67.
Runners-up are Aldi and Walmart, which each offer turkeys at 87 cents per pound. Target’s lowest cost offering is a turkey at $1.49 per pound.
You can find turkeys for $1.99 per pound at Food Lion, Piggly Wiggly and Trader Joe’s. The Trader Joe’s price is for a brined turkey, but non-brined turkeys will cost you $3.49 per pound.
Lowes Foods offers a turkey at $2.49 per pound, but with a 77% discount with a rewards card. On a 17-pound bird, the store card will drop the price from $42.88 to $9.82.
The same brand as the discounted Lowes turkey, Honeysuckle White, was found at Walmart for 87 cents per pound.
Of the stores visited by The State, Costco, Fresh Market and Whole Foods all had not put out turkeys this week.
That could be because there’s still time to shop for your holiday dinner, but it might also reflect supply chain issues that have beset all manner of shipping and pushed up consumer prices this year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates turkey supplies are down 1.4%, and by late October 60% of turkeys were out of stock, a result of staffing shortages at turkey farms and processors.
The New York Times declared this year’s Thanksgiving dinner “could be the most expensive in the history of the holiday,” thanks to everything from inflation and bad weather to trade policies and high transportation costs.
Reporters Emily Bohatch, Joseph Bustos and Sarah Ellis contributed
This story was originally published November 11, 2021 at 2:20 PM.
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