The National Restaurant Association (NRA) has released a new study suggesting that 10 percent of Americans will eat out this Thanksgiving, a shift from the not-so-distant past when people would return to the family dining room for the traditional holiday meal – made from ingredients bought at the local grocery store.
And there’s more bad news in the NRA survey for American supermarkets. The study suggests that more than half of Americans will supplement meals made at home with products bought from restaurants’ take-out operations.
And there’s more bad news in the NRA survey for American supermarkets. The study suggests that more than half of Americans will supplement meals made at home with products bought from restaurants’ take-out operations.
- KC's View:
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We’re just old-fashioned enough, with a smattering of Puritanism running through our bloodstream, that we find the notion of Thanksgiving dinner eaten at a restaurant abhorrent. (Maybe we really are getting old…)
But this is a reality than cannot be ignored, nor argued away with the suggestion that bedrock American values are being corrupted.
How many American supermarkets will come to market in the next week or so before Thanksgiving by selling reduced-cost turkeys as a way of getting people into the store? (Reduced-cost turkeys at Thanksgiving being one of the dumbest ideas this industry ever has come up with, since Thanksgiving is one of the only times of the year you could sell the damned things for real money. They ought to give them away in July…)
This is illustrative of a supermarket industry that has in too many ways grown irrelevant to consumer needs and desires.
By the way, we may be old fashioned but we’ve always sort of subscribed to New Yorker humorist Calvin Trillin’s theory that since Columbus discovered America, and Columbus was Italian, then we ought to eat Spaghetti Carbonara for Thanksgiving. We just can’t get Mrs. Content Guy to go for it.
