Expect to pay more for Thanksgiving dinner in 2021

Cooking a Thanksgiving meal this year will be more expensive than ever, reports The New York Times. Practically everything—even relatively inexpensive items like aluminum turkey roasting pans, packaged dinners rolls, and sweet potatoes—is expected to cost more this year. The higher cost of turkey dinner is being attributed to several factors, including knotty supply chains, transportation costs, worker shortages, extreme weather, and rising inflation. Ingredient “price creep”—along with fears of the kind of pandemic-related shortages we saw in 2020—is driving many home cooks to shop early this year for key ingredients such as canned pumpkin and vanilla. However, most economists do not predict more than a few “spot” shortages. The biggest Thanksgiving-related price hike most of us will encounter, according to market analysts, will be the cost of the star of the show: the turkey itself. Currently, commercial whole frozen turkeys cost 25 cents a pound more than they did a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) recently released turkey report (yes, that’s a thing). Why? Most commercial turkeys are raised on corn, which experienced its own dramatic price jump in the past year.