Thanksgiving is a time to gather with loved ones, to express gratitude for life’s bounty – and of course, to eat.

And when it comes to Thanksgiving foods, it looks like Americans will get some relief from their grocery bills this year, after a few years of rising costs.

A “classic” Thanksgiving feast for a party of 10 will cost an average of $58.08 in 2024 — down 5% from 2023 and down 9% from 2022, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, a trade group for farmers and ranchers.

The analysis includes turkey, cubed stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls, frozen peas, fresh cranberries, celery, carrots, pumpkin pie mix and crusts, heavy cream and whole milk.

Prices for this food basket hit a record high of $64.05 in 2022, according to the Farm Bureau.

Households that add ham, russet potatoes and frozen green beans to the mix would pay an average of $77.34 in 2024 — an 8% drop from 2023, the Farm Bureau said.

The annual price drop will be welcome news for many households: 44% of people hosting Thanksgiving this year are concerned about the cost of the event, according to a recent Deloitte survey.

The drop is largely due to several supply-demand dynamics that are driving down prices for key commodities — Turkey, most importantly — and an overarching decline in U.S. food inflation, economists said.

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“Food inflation has been quite subdued,” said Robin Wenzel, head of the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute. “You can see some good relief there.”

That said, a classic Thanksgiving meal is still 19% more expensive than in 2019, according to the Farm Bureau.

“Declines can’t really erase the dramatic increases we had,” said Farm Bureau economist Bernt Nelson.

Price movements in Turkey had “absolutely the biggest impact” on the overall cost of a Thanksgiving meal this year, Nelson said. That’s because a 16-pound bird accounts for 44% of the total Thanksgiving grocery bill, he said.

According to the Farm Bureau, the national average cost for a 16-pound turkey is down 6% from 2023. According to the Consumer Price Index, overall turkey prices are down about 4% over the past year.

Turkey was a “curious item” this year, Nelson said.

On the one hand, the supply of turkeys has dropped “significantly,” he said. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers raised about 205 million turkeys in 2024, a 6% decline from 2023. That’s the lowest figure since 1985, Nelson said.

Largely that’s due to the impact of bird flu, a deadly and contagious disease among birds that has contributed to the deaths of about 14 million turkeys since 2022, he said.

Lower supply would tend to increase prices, all else being equal. But consumer demand has also decreased. So far this year, per capita turkey consumption is down about a pound, he said.

The overall effect was lower turkey prices.

Meanwhile, prices fell significantly — by 14% — for whole milk, a basic ingredient in pies and other recipes, Nelson said.

That’s largely due to “favorable” weather conditions in the U.S. for dairy cattle — both in terms of their overall well-being and the crops they eat — boosting milk production, Nelson said.

Of course, not everything is cheaper.

For example, prices for processed foods such as buns and cubed fillings are up more than 8% from 2023, according to the Farm Bureau. That’s primarily due to non-food inflation, such as labor costs, which pushes up prices “for partners across the food supply chain,” the group said in its analysis.

Besides labor costs, there were also many factors that contributed to the rapidly rising prices of groceries during the pandemic era.

In 2022, for example, food prices rose faster than in any year since 1979, partly due to an outbreak of bird flu that affected egg and poultry prices, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “pushed other inflationary pressures across the economy, such as high energy costs worsened. ” said the USDA.

Higher costs for energy, including gasoline and diesel, translate into higher prices throughout the food supply chain, such as distributing groceries to store shelves, experts said.

“Food price growth slowed in 2023 as wholesale food prices and these other inflation factors declined starting in 2022,” the USDA said, and fell further in 2024.

According to Wenzel of the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, consumers who want to save money on their Thanksgiving meal in 2024 can do so by switching between store brands and name brands for certain groceries.

A menu of entirely private label items to feed 10 friends and family members would result in total savings of $17, according to a Wells Fargo analysis.

Consumers often pay more for branded items, but that is not the case in all cases this year.

For example, name-brand cranberries are cheaper on average than store brand, Wenzel said.

“If you’re shopping this year, it really comes down to doing a little research,” Wenzel said.