NEW YORK (AP) — With Thanksgiving less than two weeks away, Walmart, Target, Aldi and other grocers are jockeying for space at holiday tables with turkey dinner deals and other promotions to entice Americans reeling from the latest food price inflation.

Walmart, the nation’s largest food retailer, first included ingredients for the traditional turkey feast in a meal deal three years ago. This year, the 29-item offering, which includes frozen turkey and side dish ingredients, costs under $55 and is planned to serve eight. This corresponds to less than $7 per person.

Target’s version for four is $5 cheaper than the company’s 2023 Thanksgiving dinner, a $20 value, and includes frozen turkey, stuffing mix, canned green beans and canned glazed cranberry sauce. Aldi’s offers frozen Butterball turkey with gravy mix, as well as pumpkin toppings for pumpkin pie and ingredients for side dishes like sweet potato casserole. The German-owned supermarket chain priced the product at $47, which it said was less than the price charged for the same products in 2019.

Meijer, which has more than 500 supercenters in the Midwest, joined the fray last week by offering frozen turkeys for 49 cents per pound or less and a $37 Thanksgiving family meal for a group of four to six people.

Because recommended serving sizes and ingredients vary, it is difficult to compare relevant menus to determine which represents the best value. But the promotions, rolled out earlier than usual and at a time when many households have been put off by high prices, underscore the importance of Thanksgiving for grocers, analysts said.

While consumers’ perceptions of grocery prices are based on the cost of staples like eggs and milk, “Thanksgiving dinner has essentially become a new reference point,” said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe, a global marketing and communications company.

This is the second-largest holiday food opportunity for retailers, behind the feasts that accompany the winter holidays. Compared to the average, Thanksgiving dinner shopping drove a $2.4 billion increase in sales in the week before and after the holiday last year, market research firm Circana said. Circana said shopping for Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s Eve meals gave stores a $5.3 billion increase in sales compared to an average week.

Walmart launched its offer on October 14, two weeks earlier than last year, and plans to make it available by December 24. The two bundles the retailer offered last year contained different products, but Walmart said this year’s select items cost 3.5% less.

Circana vice president Joan Driggs expects shoppers to purchase items on sale for half of what they need to prepare a Thanksgiving meal. That’s twice as many as in 2022, when retailers pulled promotions due to limited supplies left over from the coronavirus pandemic.

Consumers still aren’t seeing discounts as deep as those that grocers were touting in 2019, before the pandemic, Driggs said. That’s why retailers are creating strategies like meal packages to attract customers, which can “reduce stress” for shoppers because it shows the cost per person, he said.

Angel Rosario-Sanchez, a 24-year-old New Jersey resident who was at a Walmart store in Secaucus on Wednesday, said she planned to spend Thanksgiving with friends but had not yet gone grocery shopping. When he saw the large display of Thanksgiving items in the store, he wanted to go back to buy something.

“I always trust Walmart for deals,” said Rosario-Sanchez, who typically chooses groceries from Walmart’s lower-end Great Value brand. “Inflation is too high and needs to return to where it was at the beginning.”

Over the past two years, Walmart, Target and others have seen price-conscious consumers shift more of their shopping to store label brands. In response, retailers have improved their selections or created new food brands.

In April, Walmart launched Bettergoods, the largest store-label food brand in 20 years in terms of assortment, to appeal to younger customers who aren’t loyal to national brands and want chef-inspired, more affordable food.

But store brands aren’t necessarily cheaper.

Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute, a team of national industry consultants that provides economic insights and research, compared the costs of store brands versus national brands for a typical Thanksgiving meal. Branded versions of cranberry sauce were cheaper than the store brands the team inventoried; branded pumpkin pies and store brand versions were the same price.

Robin Wenzel, president of the Wells Fargo Institute, thinks that manufacturers of some familiar brands realized that they had “overdone” some post-pandemic price increases and are cutting back.

The Agri-Food Institute’s Thanksgiving menu for 10 includes turkey, stuffing, salad, cranberries, dinner rolls and pumpkin pie. Using all brands will cost $90 this year, which is 0.5% less than last year. Preparing the same meal with store-brand food would cost $73, or 2.7% more than it did a year ago.

This gives shoppers the option to mix and match, Wenzel said.

The government’s latest snapshot of inflation showed grocery prices rose just 0.1% from September to October and rose just 1.1% last year. This provided some relief to consumers after food costs rose nearly 23% in the past three years.

Prices are dropping for Thanksgiving entrées and drinks, but given the rise in food prices in recent years, consumers may or may not feel it.

Retail intelligence provider Datasembly said the cost of a 15-item Thanksgiving meal averaged $65.51 this year, down about 3% from last year but overall 42% higher than in 2019. For example, a 12-ounce can of jellied cranberry sauce averaged $2.89; This is 1% lower than a year ago, but still 90% higher than in 2019.

A 10-pound frozen turkey costs an average of $10.40 this year, a 19% decrease from 2023 but still 6% higher than 2019, the data firm said. Prices for some Thanksgiving items are still rising: A 30-ounce box of pumpkin pie mix now costs $5.56 on average, up 6% from a year ago and nearly 70% from five years ago, according to Datasembly.

Like many food retailers, Walmart included a mix of store and brand-name items in its Thanksgiving package. The meal deal includes Ocean Spray canned jellied cranberry sauce and green beans and dinner rolls from the in-house Great Value line. The package also includes fresh produce, including a white, whole frozen turkey from national brand Shady Brook Farms and a 5-pound bag of red potatoes.

Many things will skip packages at Walmart and other places, though.

While visiting Walmart in Secaucus, New Jersey, Nadia Rivest, 70, said she was already shopping at the discounter for turkey, fish and chicken for Thanksgiving dinner. But he was only interested in buying fresh produce, not canned goods.

“I like red peppers, red tomatoes and fresh things,” he said.

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