Inflation at the Thanksgiving Table

If Thanksgiving 2020 feels like a long time ago, your grocery bill agrees. Across the core staples of a traditional holiday spread, prices are meaningfully higher than they were five years ago — though not always in the ways people expect. Looking across seven key items, the inflation story is less about broad-based price pressure and more about a few troublemakers shaping the entire meal.

The biggest outlier — by a wide margin — is eggs, which is a critical input throughout the meal from appetizers to dessert. Even after the egg-price collapse of 2023, they remain roughly 75% more expensive than in 2020. No other input comes close.

Processed items show the next-strongest price creep. Cakes and cookies are up 31%, rising like clockwork every year since 2020. Gravy, quietly one of the most inflation-prone categories in the CPI’s “sauces and gravies” bucket, is up 29%. These categories have less to do with farm output and more to do with the cumulative effects of labor, packaging, and transportation costs. In other words, you’re not paying more for flour — you’re paying more for getting it mixed, baked, boxed, and shipped.

For the main course, turkey inflation has cooled, settling around 21% above 2020, almost perfectly in line with the broader food-at-home index. That means turkey is neither the villain nor the victim of this year’s story — just a bird following the macro data. Ham, by contrast, surged early and has since drifted down, now sitting at a modest 15% cumulative increase, making it the relative bargain of the protein aisle. It’s not often ham wins anything, so we’ll give it this.

Fresh produce rounds out the table with the most stable price profile. Fresh vegetables are up just 12%, while potatoesrose 18%, reflecting more traditional, weather-and-fuel-driven volatility rather than structural price shocks.

The bottom line: Thanksgiving inflation isn’t one story. It’s a mix of structural pressures, lingering supply shocks, and a few stubborn categories that refuse to come back to earth. But compared to the last few years, at least we can say this: the turkey is no longer the problem. The eggs, however, remain fully committed to the bit.