Key Takeaways
Whole turkey is Thanksgiving's biggest riser. In the week ending Thanksgiving Day 2025, whole turkeys (fresh and frozen) ran +1,651% above their usual share of items on Instacart, the largest jump of any category that week, ahead of oven cooking bags (+1,495%) and cranberries (+1,315%).
Tuesday is turkey day (for shopping, anyway). Fresh whole turkeys hit their 2025 high on Tuesday, Nov. 25, at nearly 30 times their usual share. Tuesday has been the peak day three years running. 🦃
Fresh in New England, frozen out West. Vermont (+184%) and Maine (+168%) lead the nation on fresh whole turkeys, while Alaska (+280%) and Wyoming (+173%) lead on frozen. Maine, meanwhile, buys 71% less frozen turkey than the national share.
One in four turkey carts brings the stuffing. 25.0% of orders with a whole turkey also included boxed stuffing, 55 times the typical rate, and canned cranberry sauce beat fresh cranberries in those carts by more than 2 to 1.
Thanksgiving Day belongs to the thermometer. On the big day, food thermometers spiked +3,589%, the biggest jump of any category on Instacart that day, just ahead of pumpkin pie (+3,439%).
Every November, one bird takes over the grocery list, and Instacart orders show exactly when, where, and how it happens. Below we track whole turkeys (fresh and frozen) day by day, map the states and provinces that over- and under-index, and look inside the carts that came along for the ride; in the line charts, 0% is a normal day and +100% means double the usual share. Here's the whole bird, drumsticks and all.
The Whole Table: Thanksgiving's 20 Biggest Risers 🍽️
Whole turkey tops the list at +1,651% for the week of November 21–27, 2025, counting fresh and frozen birds together, the biggest jump of any food on Instacart that week. The rest of the top 20 reads like a recipe card: cranberries (+1,315%), pumpkin pie (+1,294%), sage (+1,116%), boxed stuffing (+897%) and crispy fried onions (+847%). Every one of them spent the summer below its yearly norm, with whole turkey sitting 96% below average from June through mid-July.
Turkey claims 4 of the 20 spots (whole birds, breasts, thighs and drumsticks), and pie claims 5 once you count crusts and dough, spice and filling mixes. Collards (+561%) and mustard greens (+403%) both make the cut, and corn syrup (+670%) sneaks in on pecan pie's behalf.
It Takes a Kitchen: The Tools Behind the Feast 🍳
Thanksgiving shopping covers more than what ends up on the plate. Oven cooking bags jumped +1,495% during Thanksgiving week, a bigger rise than any food except whole turkey, and the rest of the kitchen came along with them: baking dishes (+601%), cheesecloth (+581%), foil pans and other disposable serveware (+564%) and food thermometers (+519%).
Read top to bottom, the list follows the cooking itself. Oven bags, cheesecloth, kitchen twine and a thermometer handle the bird; baking dishes, mixers, graters, cake pans and peelers take care of the sides and pies; and foil pans carry it all to the table (and send the leftovers home). The thermometer saves its biggest moment for the day itself, which we'll get to below.
The Tuesday Turkey Rush 🦃
60.3% of all fresh whole turkey purchases on Instacart in 2025 happened in the two weeks leading up to and including Thanksgiving Day, and 45.7% were purchased in the final seven days alone. The rush peaked on Tuesday, November 25, when whole turkeys' share of items hit +2,848% above their yearly average, nearly 30 times a typical day. Tuesday was also the peak day in 2023 and 2024, so if you're picking up a fresh bird that week, you'll have plenty of company.
On Thanksgiving Day itself, whole turkey share was still +1,216% above average, which is a lot of people making a very confident same-day decision. The chart shows two smaller bumps as well: a mid-October rise to +15% that lines up neatly with Canadian Thanksgiving, and a Christmas encore that peaked on December 23 at +469%. In between, whole turkey goes quiet, bottoming out at 94% below average in early July.
On the map, Vermont (+184%), Maine (+168%), North Dakota (+105%) and New Hampshire (+96%) buy the most fresh whole turkey relative to the nation, with Louisiana (+56%), Arkansas (+50%) and Mississippi (+49%) leading the South. In Canada, Saskatchewan (+31%) and New Brunswick (+28%) top the list, while Quebec sits 54% below the national share.
The Freezer-Aisle Planners ❄️
Frozen whole turkeys peaked on Friday, November 21, 2025, at +1,945%, six days before Thanksgiving and four days ahead of the fresh-bird rush. That timing lines up with the USDA's rule of thumb of about 24 hours of fridge thawing for every 4 to 5 pounds, or five to six days for a 20- to 24-pound bird. Frozen birds also make up about 60% of the whole-turkey items sold on Instacart, so this is the bigger of the two crowds.
On the map, Alaska (+280%) and Wyoming (+173%) lead frozen whole turkey by a wide margin, followed by West Virginia (+131%), Kentucky (+125%), Idaho (+114%) and Arizona (+107%). The Northeast flips the script: Maine (-71%), Massachusetts (-55%) and New Hampshire (-49%) are among the lightest frozen-turkey buyers, even though Maine and New Hampshire rank in the top four for fresh. In Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador (+113%) leads, with Atlantic neighbors New Brunswick (+44%) and Nova Scotia (+34%) close behind.
One more freezer-aisle trend: frozen turkey breast's share of items grew 27% in 2025 versus 2024, and 64% versus 2023, and during Thanksgiving week it ran +855% above its yearly average. Fresh turkey breasts are a Northeast favorite (Pennsylvania +177%, New Hampshire +174%, Massachusetts +141%), while frozen breasts lean toward Kentucky (+142%) and the upper Midwest (Wisconsin +117%, Minnesota +93%).
What Rides Along With the Bird 🛒
25.0% of orders with a fresh whole turkey also included boxed stuffing, which makes stuffing 55 times more likely to show up in a turkey order than in a typical one. Frozen-turkey carts were even more committed at 26.2%. Cranberry sauce is the next must-have: 16.3% of fresh-turkey orders and 18.5% of frozen-turkey orders included canned cranberries, more than double the rate for fresh cranberries (7.3% and 6.5%).
Gravy shows up in about 1 in 8 turkey orders, crispy fried onions (hello, green bean casserole) in about 1 in 10, and roughly 9% of turkey orders also included a ham roast, for the households that refuse to choose. The biggest multipliers belong to the supporting cast: orders with a fresh whole turkey were 79 times as likely to include dried sage, and orders with a frozen whole turkey were 97 times as likely to include oven cooking bags.
Thanksgiving Day Is Thermometer Day 🌡️
Food thermometers jumped +3,589% on Thanksgiving Day 2025, the biggest single-day spike of any category on Instacart that day, edging out pumpkin pie (+3,439%). Kitchen timers (+2,335%) and oven cooking bags (+2,296%) came next, so plenty of birds went into the oven with a plan and a backup plan. Others went outside: lighter fluid (+1,565%), wood pellets (+1,087%) and peanut oil (+941%), the classic turkey-fryer oil, all surged the same day.
Prepared turkey had its single biggest day of the year on Thanksgiving Day too, at +650%, for the cooks who decided this was the year someone else handles the bird.
The 2025 Turkey Timeline 📅
Here's how last year's turkey season played out on Instacart, from the first stirrings in early November to the Christmas encore. Every figure compares that day's (or that week's) share of items to the category's 2025 average.
If 2026 follows the same script, circle Friday, November 20 for the frozen-turkey peak and Tuesday, November 24 for the fresh-bird rush, with Thanksgiving on November 26. Canadian Thanksgiving lands on October 12.
Pass the Gravy
Few things in the cart run on a tighter schedule than the Thanksgiving turkey: frozen birds the Friday before, fresh birds on Tuesday, and a thermometer on the day itself, with stuffing and cranberry sauce riding shotgun the whole way. So whether you're a freezer-aisle planner in Wyoming, a Tuesday fresh-bird loyalist in Vermont, or the one who remembers the thermometer on Thursday, Instacart has got all the goods. Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃
