Thanksgiving spreads in Hawaii expected to be pricier this season

Next week, Hawaii consumers cooking up a Thanksgiving feast might want to give thanks that food prices haven’t been going up recently as much as they have nationally.

Still, local food price increases have been quite high for much of this year, so it’s likely that the cost to assemble a typical Thanksgiving spread will be higher than it was in 2021.

Perhaps considerably higher.

According to the most recent measure of inflation on Oahu by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of food at home in September was 6.7% more than it was in the same month a year ago. That figure included a 19% spike for dairy and related products and a 9.8% hike for cereals and bakery products, but only a scant 0.3% gain for meat, poultry, fish and eggs.

Nationally, the cost for food at home jumped 13% in September over a year earlier, or nearly twice as much as in Honolulu, which is the only place in Hawaii for which the federal agency calculates inflation.

The cost of food is not expected to have stopped rising since September, though the rate of increase may have softened. However, it’s hard to tell how much the broad measure of inflation for food matches actual prices at Hawaii supermarket checkout stations for turkey, stuffing mix, potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and other Thanksgiving dishes, especially because retailers often discount such items ahead of the holiday.

Ken Hudson, a Hawaii Kai resident, said Monday while grocery shopping at a Safeway store that he perceives prices for Thanksgiving staples as around where they were in 2021.

“I’m getting the on-sale turkey,” he said. It was $9 for a 15-pound frozen bird, or $1.67 a pound.

The store also was discounting prices for its in-house brand of frozen turkey for customers who spend $25 on other things, with more discount per pound for heavier birds.

Other things in Hudson’s cart included Stove Top Stuffing Mix at $2.50 a box, on sale from $3.99, and cans of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce for $3.49, on sale from $4.99.

“It’s little expensive,” Hudson said of the cranberry sauce. But he wasn’t shocked because of all the reports on inflation over the past several months. “The inflation is horrible,” he said.

Carl Bonham, executive director of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, said the year-over-year rate of increase for food at home on Oahu peaked in June at 14.1%. Since then it came down to 6.7% in September.

“That’s a big difference,” Bonham said, but added that “6.7% is nothing to sneeze at.”

IRI, a Chicago-based analytics firm, recently released results of a mid-October survey in which 76% of respondents said they planned to resume pre-pandemic Thanksgiving celebrations. The firm, which does research to help retailers and manufacturers with merchandising strategy, also estimated that the cost for a traditional Thanksgiving meal will be up 13.5% over 2021. “Thanksgiving is back, but it will cost more,” the IRI report said.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has conducted an annual retail price survey for classic Thanksgiving meal items nationwide over the past 36 years but has yet to produce results this year.

In 2021 the organization said the total price to feed 10 people at the Thanksgiving table was up 14% from the year before, or $53.31 compared with $46.90. That included a 16-pound turkey for $23.99, or $1.50 per pound, which was up 24% from $1.21 a pound the year before.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its most recent national inflation report covering October, said the broad price for food at home was up 12.4% from the same month in 2021.

That figure included a 16.9% increase for uncooked poultry other than chicken, a 9.1% rise for ham, a 15.2% gain for potatoes, a 43% spike for eggs, a 26.7% surge for butter and a 18.6% hike for frozen or refrigerated bakery products including pies.

The next inflation report for Hawaii, which does not break down food items as specifically as the national report, is due out in December.