Any cash saved from last year’s cancelled Thanksgiving might be about to go down the drain – because a series of new reports shows how this year’s holiday is about to become the most expensive ever.
You can blame the lack of workers, empty shelves and out-of-control inflation that has marked the first 10 months of President Joe Biden’s administration.
As a result, Americans will have to reach deep into the piggy bank for the turkey… break out the credit cards for the mashed potatoes… search the sofa to find spare change for the stuffing… and maybe even pass on the pie.
The New York Times reports that nearly every ingredient that makes up a traditional Thanksgiving feast has gone up in price.
Even the roasting pans are more expensive as the price of aluminum hits a 10-year high.
Aluminum is also needed for cans – including beer cans. Along with rising glass prices increasing the cost of wine bottles, the Thanksgiving toast will set you back more than usual.
“Every single part of the supply chain has been affected from COVID, and we just haven’t recovered yet,” Diane McCrohan, marketing department chair for the Johnson & Wales University School of Business, told WPRI in Rhode Island.
Norman Brown, director of sweet potato sales for Wada Farms in Raleigh, N.C., told the Times he’s had to pay double the usual fees to haul around his crop.
“I never seen anything like it, and I’ve been running sweet potatoes for 38 or 39 years, he said. “I don’t know what the answer is, but in the end it’s all going to get passed on to the consumer.”
John Catsimatidis, owner of New York’s Gristedes supermarket chain, told the New York Post that shoppers should be ready to shell out up to 15 percent more for their feast.
And in some cases, no amount of money will help. The ingredients are simply out of stock, he said, adding that suppliers are now engaged in “routine rationing” of supermarket staples, filling as little as half of each store’s order for essentials such as dairy products.
Another insider told the Post that consumers should expect to pay a lot more for a quality bird.
Jake Stevens, who operates Fire Creek Farms, said the labor shortage means he’s paying more to get his turkeys ready for market, leading to a 20 percent price increase.
“This year’s Thanksgiving it looks like is shaping up to be one of the most expensive Thanksgivings on record,” he said. “The consumer at the end of the day is going to have to literally eat that.”
The Consumer Price Index surged 5.4 percent from September 2020 to September 2021.
The biggest jump was in energy, including fuel, which is up 25 percent and means it costs a lot more to get products from the farm to the store.
That, in turn, led to a 4.6 percent jump in the price of food overall, but some specifics have risen even faster.
Meats, poultry, fish and eggs – all part of a typical holiday feast – are up 10.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Katheryn Russ, a professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, told the Times that the only upside is there are no signs of the panic-buying that marked some of the early days of the pandemic.
But there may not be much comfort in that: There’s still so little to buy.
The best approach this year will be to buy early, remain flexible and take advantage of bargains for items on your shopping list… because you might not see those deals again.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.