Local Grocery Stores Prepare for Thanksgiving Shoppers

For grocery stores, they are in between deer season and Thanksgiving shopping season. As hunters are no longer coming in, those who need to get Thanksgiving food will soon arrive.

Perch’s IGA in Alpena is getting food ready and preparing for people to begin their Thanksgiving shopping this weekend.

“They should get their turkeys two or three days in advance because they come in with a chest cavity frozen, so that way it has time to thaw out,” said Perch’s IGA owner Terry Curtis.

The turkey numbers are there for Perch’s, but they have seen the number of people buying turkeys decrease in the past few years.

“I think just last minute, people come in, wait until the last minute to get their bird and they know we always have a fair amount of supply,” said Curtis. We don’t ever really run out.”

For anyone who is thinking of getting their Thanksgiving food early, Curtis encourages not waiting until the last minute.

“Every day you wait closer to Thanksgiving, the busier it is, the more wait time you’ll have,” he said. “We only have so much staff, so it might be a little wait at the counter trying to get service, but we do our best.”

Even with inflation bringing prices up for Thanksgiving foods, Curtis says people are still willing to put together a great experience on Thanksgiving.

“Everything is up a little, turkeys are down this year,” he said. “Actually, we’re 30 cents less this year than last year on our fresh birds, so that was a plus. Frozen birds are actually right up, the cost of a frozen bird is just as much as a fresh, but it doesn’t seem like it affects people. They still come up with the money to put on their Thanksgiving feast.”

Curtis says he expects this weekend to be when people begin their early Thanksgiving shopping.