Holiday or everyday, 2020 has been a year like no other. For an industry largely accustomed to glacial change, the pandemic prompted unnerving times requiring warp-speed decision making and continued pivoting. Eight months into the pandemic, the virus remains in firm control of how and where people spend their food dollars. In November, the rapidly rising number of new COVID-19 cases caused renewed restrictions in numerous states. Combined with winter weather, restaurants in many Northern states were once more limited to takeout and delivery. All of this formed the backdrop for Thanksgiving 2020. “Our late October survey pointed to very different Thanksgiving celebrations,” said Jonna Parker, Team Lead Fresh for IRI. “The number of people who planned to host or attend a Thanksgiving meal with extended family dropped from 48% in 2019 to 26% this year. Additionally, few planned to travel out of state, gatherings were expected to be smaller, shoppers indicated they may be looking for a smaller turkey or another meat and many planned to shop earlier to avoid crowds. All these plans pointed to many potential changes for the meat department in a faceoff between Thanksgiving traditions and COVID reality.”
Thanksgiving Meat Department Performance
While restaurants certainly take some of the Thanksgiving food spend in typical years, the holiday is largely a retail-focused expenditure. That makes beating last year’s result a much harder feat than say Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day, which are big dining out holidays. Additionally, many people shopped earlier or diverted purchases online — in some cases encouraged by retailers to manage traffic flow during one of the busiest shopping weeks of the year. Some retailers provided free delivery, ramped up their curbside order slots and encouraged earlier shopping. Many closed their doors altogether on Thanksgiving Day to provide the team a much needed break and a few closed their doors on Black Friday, a traditionally slow day for grocery retailing.