{"id":366194,"date":"2025-11-09T05:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T05:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/366194\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T05:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T05:44:10","slug":"walmart-thanksgiving-meal-basket-is-25-cheaper-but-has-half-as-many-items-as-last-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/366194\/","title":{"rendered":"Walmart Thanksgiving meal basket is 25% cheaper but has half as many items as last year"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Thanksgiving less than three weeks away, the question of how much this year\u2019s turkey and trimmings will cost looms large, especially with grocery prices\u00a02.7% higher<\/a>\u00a0than they were in 2024.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has claimed over the past two days that costs for the Thanksgiving meal are down 25% this year, citing a prepackaged Thanksgiving meal basket from Walmart<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just saw that Walmart came out with a statement last night, they\u2019ve done it for many years, that Thanksgiving this year will cost 25% less than Thanksgiving last year,\u201d he said\u00a0during a news conference<\/a>\u00a0on Friday with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

But Trump\u2019s numbers are off. Here\u2019s a closer look at the facts.<\/p>\n

CLAIM: Walmart prices show that the cost of Thanksgiving dinner is 25% lower in 2025 than in 2024.<\/p>\n

THE FACTS: This is misleading. While Walmart\u2019s 2025 meal basket costs about 25% less than the one from 2024, that\u2019s because it offers fewer items and different products that make it more affordable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not apples to apples, right?\u201d said David Anderson, a livestock economist at Texas A&M University. \u201cWhat this does highlight is individual retailers\u2019 strategies for getting customers in the door.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2025 basket costs less than $40 and feeds 10 people, about $4 a head,\u00a0according to Walmart<\/a>. In 2024, a\u00a0basket for eight<\/a>\u00a0cost approximately $56, less than $7 per person. That\u2019s about a 25% decrease, possibly more depending on price fluctuations. John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., touted the savings in a\u00a0LinkedIn post<\/a>\u00a0last month.<\/p>\n

But the baskets differ significantly. For example, this year\u2019s includes just 15 items compared to last year\u2019s 29. It is missing many dessert items, including a pecan pie, mini marshmallows and muffin mix, as well as savory items such as sweet potatoes, yellow onions and celery stalks.<\/p>\n

The superstore retailer has also substituted some products. Instead of 12 sweet Hawaiian rolls, the 2025 deal includes 12 dinner rolls. Both are from Walmart\u2019s store brand. It also offers Kinder\u2019s crispy fried onions as opposed to French\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Plus, the amount of each item varies. Customers were promised a 10-16 pound turkey in 2024, but a 13.5 pound one this year. And they\u2019ll get one can of cream of mushroom soup instead of two.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re marketing it that \u2018hey, this is a more affordable way,\u2019 yet that implies that \u2018man, stuff\u2019s a lot more expensive,\u2019\u201d Anderson said. \u201cI guess it\u2019s good marketing.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Thursday\u00a0press release<\/a>\u00a0from the White House also cited cheaper Thanksgiving deals at Lidl\u2019s, Aldi\u2019s, Target<\/a> and Schnucks.<\/p>\n

Target\u2019s four-person meal costs less than $20, about the same as in 2024, but substitutes green beans and cream of mushroom soup for French bread and frozen corn \u2014 also not an apples-to-apples comparison.<\/p>\n

Schnucks provided The Associated Press with a\u00a0press release<\/a>\u00a0saying the retailer is offering consumers its lowest price on a frozen store-brand turkey in over 15 years. It declined further comment. Lidl US said it is offering its Thanksgiving meal at the lowest ever price and Aldi said its price was lower than 2024. Target and Walmart did not comment.<\/p>\n

According to a\u00a0recent report from Wells Fargo<\/a>, the cost of a 10-person Thanksgiving meal has fallen 2% to 3% since 2024, depending in part on whether customers go for national name brands or cheaper store labels. The White House press release also cited this report.<\/p>\n

Some economists have concerns about the price of turkey.\u00a0Purdue University\u2019s College of Agriculture<\/a>\u00a0reported at the end of October that wholesale prices are up 75% since October 2024, while retail prices are 25% higher than a year ago.<\/p>\n

An\u00a0earlier analysis<\/a>\u00a0from the American Farm Bureau Federation found that wholesale turkey prices were up about 40%.<\/p>\n

And yet, that doesn\u2019t mean every bird will be pricier in 2025. Anderson explained that because certain retailers, such as Walmart, contract their turkeys well in advance, the price for customers might be much lower than the market currently indicates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat gives them the flexibility to run those types of specials,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Thanksgiving less than three weeks away, the question of how much this year\u2019s turkey and trimmings will…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":366195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[8161,64,69,79,6270,44599,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-366194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-affordability","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-retail","13":"tag-thanksgiving","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115518155221131290","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}