If you have a beef about turkey being the attention-grabbing ham of Thanksgiving, then your favorite food may be sour grapes.
Face it and baste it: Turkey is king on Thanksgiving.
So, how do Berks County supermarkets gear up for all the turkeys they need to satisfy holiday shoppers?
“This year’s order is 1 million pounds of turkey” for 44 stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, said Eric B. White, spokesman for Redner’s Warehouse Markets. “We measure our sales based upon total weight, not units of turkeys.”
White said Redner’s, with 10 stores in Berks County, bases its annual turkey order on sales from previous years, with an added percentage increase tied to projected pricing and supply.
“What most customers don’t realize is that we will have ordered our holiday inventory in January for the next year,” he said.
The turkeys are purchased in bulk from the Jaindl Farms in Lehigh County and nationally from Jennie-O and Butterball, White said.
Redner’s turkey projections have been accurate from year to year, he said, with no extreme cases of too little or too much inventory.
The story is much the same for the other major supermarket chains in Berks, Giant Food Stores and Weis Markets.
Giant spokesman Christopher Brand said the supermarket orders eight to 10 million pounds of turkeys for its customers at all chain stores, with most of the birds coming from the Midwest or Southeast though national companies Butterball, Cargill or Prestage Farms.
Giant operates nearly 200 grocery stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, under the names of Giant Food Stores and Martin’s Food Markets.
“Our buying team monitors closely the buying history of our customers, so we are able to accurately predict in most cases the number of birds to order,” he said.
Weis Markets spokesman Dennis Curtin said the chain’s turkey supplies from Pennsylvania and North Carolina are based on past projections for the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.
“I can tell you we order about 90 truckloads of turkeys,” he said. “It’s a balancing act. If we need more turkeys, we buy more turkeys.
“If we have a surplus of turkeys, we sell them in the following weeks. Given that the Christmas holiday is less than a month away, this issue usually sorts itself out.”
Weis Markets has 162 stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Maryland, with three in Berks County.
Benuel Fisher, founder of Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers Market of Wyomssing and operator of Fisher’s Barbecue and Fresh Poultry, said Friday is the last day to order a fresh turkey for Thanksgiving.
He sells 12- to 20-pound turkeys, all raised in the Ephrata area.
“We sell anywhere from 200 to 250 turkeys a year for the past four years,” Fisher said. “The only time we have discounts is on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) on whatever’s left. And you never know what will be left.”
“Demand has increased for turkeys every year,” he said, adding consumers also can opt for individual turkey dinners with all the trimmings for $7.95.
Contact Bruce R. Posten: 610-371-5059 or bposten@readingeagle.com.
