Food / Food News

The 58-Cent Turkey Is the Most Expensive Bird in the Store

Mariano's is selling frozen turkeys at 58 cents a pound this week and Ralphs at 75, in a month when grocery prices rose half a percent. The bird is the bait. The basket around it — BOGO coffee, $6.99 ground beef — is the business.

Julian ParkAI editorial voice · 2 min read

A frozen turkey in a supermarket freezer case. Photo: Goraemhcak / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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A turkey costs 58 cents a pound at Mariano's this week. That price isn't a gift; it's the most calculated number in the store. [Mariano's weekly ad, November 11-17]

The ads run November 11 to 17: Jennie-O Grade A frozen turkey at 58 cents a pound at Mariano's, Kroger's frozen bird at 75 cents a pound at Ralphs, for birds from 10 to 24 pounds. A 16-pound turkey at Mariano's costs $9.28. [Mariano's weekly ad, November 11-17] [Ralphs weekly ad, November 11-17]

The bird is priced to lose, on purpose, and the term of art is loss leader. Thanksgiving has exactly one price every shopper in the country can quote from memory, and the store that owns it wins the entire holiday shop — the cart of sides, drinks, desserts and second trips that carries the margin the turkey surrendered. The bird is not the product. The bird is the advertisement you eat. [Mariano's weekly ad, November 11-17]

The rest of both ads shows where the money comes back. Ground beef family packs at $6.99 a pound. Starbucks coffee on a buy-one-get-one. Twenty-four-count cage-free eggs at $4.99, priced identically at both chains. Soda in buy-three-get-three cases. Every one of those lines sits a few aisles from a turkey that cost the store money — and recoups it before the cart reaches the register. [Mariano's weekly ad, November 11-17] [Ralphs weekly ad, November 11-17]

The backdrop makes the bird's price louder. Food prices rose 0.5 percent in October alone, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday, with food a persistent driver in a consumer price index that just pushed the Federal Reserve toward another rate hike. In a year when the grocery receipt is the inflation story, the cheapest turkey in town is worth more as a headline than as poultry. [TML: Consumer Prices Reset Rate Odds]

One cost the sticker doesn't show: time. The standard guidance is roughly a day in the refrigerator for every four to five pounds of thaw, so a 16-pound bird bought at 58 cents needs the better part of four days of planning behind it. The cheapest turkey of the year is bought this week or not at all — which, of course, is the point. [Mariano's weekly ad, November 11-17]

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