Aldi, Lidl Cut Prices for Thanksgiving

The exterior of an Aldi store at night in Athens, Ohio

(Image credit: Getty Images)

As inflation worries hover over the holidays, two no-frills, deep-discount grocery chains are cutting prices on Thanksgiving essentials in the weeks before the holiday.

Aldi and Lidl, both German owned, are rolling back prices on ingredients their U.S. shoppers buy the most for Thanksgiving entertaining. Both chains are celebrated by fans for their quirkiness. Both are limited-assortment grocers carrying mostly store-brand products.

Aldi’s price drops are under its Thanksgiving Price Rewind banner. The grocer says it rolled back prices to what they were in 2019, before the pandemic, equaling discounts of up to 30% on a swath of Thanksgiving products, including appetizers, beverages, desserts and sides. Discounted items in the store are marked with a red “Thanksgiving Price Rewind” notice.

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Lidl is compiling Thanksgiving dinner baskets that can feed 10 people for under $30, including turkey at 49 cents per pound – $1.50 less than the national average, Lidl said in a press release (Aldi’s frozen turkey price is $1.07 per pound). Other products in the Thanksgiving basket include pumpkin pie mix, two pie crusts, a stalk of celery, baby carrots, a gallon of milk, sweet peas, cranberries, sweet potatoes, heavy whipping cream, turkey stuffing mix and Hawaiian sweet rolls.

Of the two chains, Aldi has the larger U.S. presence with 2,243 stores throughout the country. Lidl operates 177 U.S. stores, all located on the East Coast and South.

Both chains are making concerted efforts to allay their customers’ concerns about rising grocery prices. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Consumer Price Index prices for food-at-home rose 13.5% year over year ending in August. That’s the largest 12-month percentage increase since 1979.

At the same time, shoppers are learning of possible turkey shortages and-or higher prices on turkey this holiday season. Avian flu earlier this year killed millions of the birds.

Bob was Senior Editor at Kiplinger.com for seven years and is now a contributor to the website. He has more than 40 years of experience in online, print and visual journalism. Bob has worked as an award-winning writer and editor in the Washington, D.C., market as well as at news organizations in New York, Michigan and California. Bob joined Kiplinger in 2016, bringing a wealth of expertise covering retail, entertainment, and money-saving trends and topics. He was one of the first journalists at a daily news organization to aggressively cover retail as a specialty and has been lauded in the retail industry for his expertise. Bob has also been an adjunct and associate professor of print, online and visual journalism at Syracuse University and Ithaca College. He has a master’s degree from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a bachelor’s degree in communications and theater from Hope College.