Walmart’s 2025 Thanksgiving meal consisting of pre-selected products costs about one-quarter less than last year’s meal, but it also includes fewer grocery items and different food brands. Yet President Donald Trump has been misleadingly touting the decline in the price of this year’s meal without mentioning the reasons for the big decrease.
There’s still a drop in price when comparing the same basket of items as the 2024 meal, but it’s a smaller decrease — 6.5% by our calculations.
In a Nov. 5 Truth Social post, Trump wrote: “Walmart just announced that Prices for a Thanksgiving Dinner is now down 25% since under Sleepy/Crooked Joe Biden, in 2024. AFFORDABILITY is a Republican Stronghold. Hopefully, Republicans will use this irrefutable fact!” He made similar claims about Walmart’s annual holiday promotion in remarks on Nov. 5, 6 and 7, while claiming that grocery prices “are way down.”
Average grocery prices are up — not down, as we wrote earlier this month. The Consumer Price Index for “food-at-home” increased by 1.4% from January to September, and was up 2.7% from September 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But this year’s curated dinner basket from Walmart, at nearly $40, is about 25% less than the $55 price of the 2024 basket, Walmart said. The retail giant has made the meals available for purchase since 2022, and it said this year’s offering, which is supposed to serve 10 people, is its “most affordable holiday meal yet.”
In trumpeting the price drop, however, Trump has ignored why the cost of the store’s holiday dinner went down so much this year.
To start, this year’s meal includes fewer food products compared with last year’s.
There are 15 different products in the 2025 meal and 22 individual items. The 2024 meal had 21 different products and 29 individual items.
Also, the meals this year and last do not consist of the exact same foods or brands.
For example, the 2025 meal has a 13.5-pound Butterball turkey, Kinder’s fried onions, Great Value dinner rolls, fresh cranberries and a twin pack of Stove Top turkey stuffing.
Meanwhile, the 2024 meal included a 10- to 16-pound unspecified “Whole Frozen Turkey,” French’s crispy fried onions, Great Value sweet Hawaiian rolls, a can of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce and several ingredients that could be used for homemade stuffing.
The 2024 meal also included items, such as sweet potatoes and a pecan pie, that were cut from the 2025 meal.
When we used the Walmart website on Nov. 12 to recreate the 2024 shopping cart, the price was $51.39 based on sales prices and before sales tax. That’s a decline of about 6.5% from the 2024 price of $55. (Walmart also said that its 2024 dinner was cheaper than its 2023 meal based on purchasing the same list of items both years.)
The 2024 meal served “eight people for less than $7 per person,” Walmart said. A meal using those same items this year would cost about $6.42 per person for a group of that size.
The Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute reported that its 10-person dinner costs less as well.
“Even though the cost of food at home measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is up 2.7% from a year ago, the cost of Wells Fargo’s Thanksgiving menu has fallen by about 2 to 3%, depending on the shopper’s strategy,” the Wells Fargo Thanksgiving Food Report says.
The institute said that a dinner menu consisting of all private-label, or store brand items, would cost $80, while a menu with all national name brand items would cost $95. The Wells Fargo dinner menu includes turkey and stuffing, frozen vegetables, mashed potatoes, gravy, fresh cranberries, dinner rolls, salad mix and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.
“At the heart of the uptick in the CPI’s food-at-home increase is protein, specifically beef and eggs, which are not on the Thanksgiving menu,” the report says. “Without those items, consumers will find relief in a traditional Thanksgiving meal.”
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