Is Costco's Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner (And Extras) Worth Buying?

We all love the idea of a huge, home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner, but the reality of the holiday makes premade meals like Costco's awfully appealing. Anyone who has hosted in the past knows that it's a lot of work, with stress not just from prepping a half-dozen or more recipes, but also from a crowded kitchen that forces you to time your Thanksgiving cooking perfectly. And all this is happening while your guests are enjoying each other's company without you. Quite a few stores, restaurants, and delivery services have recognized this, and premade, heat-at-home Thanksgiving meals have become more common, but they often come at a premium price. So how does the famously affordable Costco's Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner stack up to other meals and cooking at home?

Costco's gourmet Thanksgiving turkey dinner is meant to feed eight people, but comes in at a whopping 28 pounds of food, so you could probably feed 10 without much of an issue. Priced at $200, it's in the same range as other meals from places like Whole Foods and Honey Baked Ham, but it offers a wider variety of sides. The whole meal comes with turkey breast (no dark meat) and gravy, with mashed potatoes, stuffing, mac and cheese, corn, green bean casserole, cranberry relish, 12 dinner rolls, pumpkin pie, and a Thanksgiving apple cobbler. The main sides all come in three pound trays as well. That's a lot of food, at $20 to $25 per person depending on how far you stretch it.

Costco's Thanksgiving dinner is precooked and just needs to be heated, so while some places like Walmart offer Thanksgiving bundles to make things easier, we are only looking at nationally available places that offer similar heat-and-eat meals. One of the most popular is Whole Foods. While it is surprisingly cheaper than Costco at $170 and also serves eight, it has fewer sides. There is no corn, mac and cheese, rolls, or desserts. And while Whole Foods says each side has eight servings, it has not actually specified how much each serving is.

Similarly priced is Honey Baked Ham, which offers a more meat-heavy take on Thanksgiving. It's meal is $180, and says it feeds 14 to 18, which makes it the best deal so far. However that money is mostly going to a larger turkey, and also ham, of course. The only sides you get are green bean casserole and some cornbread stuffing. Omaha Steaks offers a similarly-priced meal at $165, but also doesn't have as many sides as Costco, with only creamed corn, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, bread, and pumpkin pie to go with the turkey. The turkey must also be fully cooked at home, and the sides are smaller portions. Lastly, Williams Sonoma offers a nice spread with some fancier sides, but lacks dessert, and is much more expensive than Costco at $299.

Perhaps the closest to Costco's offering in scale and price is Cracker Barrel's Thanksgiving dinner. It has a heat-and-eat Thanksgiving meal for $185 that also serves eight to 10. It lacks Costco's corn and mac and cheese, but does add sweet potatoes and also has two pies, pumpkin and pecan. You can also customize it more by adding things like hashbrown casserole for an extra charge. It's the only Thanksgiving meal that can compete with the size of Costco's offering.

But what kind of premium are you paying for Costco's meal, or any other one, versus cooking from scratch? Quite a bit, actually. Even if you want to go as convenient as possible and opt for premade options you can get at a grocery store, like pies and mac and cheese, our calculations for all the ingredients needed to recreate Costco's meal as the same serving sizes came to only about $80. This is assuming you already have some basics like flour and sugar on hand, but even if you don't, the meal wouldn't top out over $100. Turns out the most popular Thanksgiving sides like the classic green bean casserole and stuffing aren't really that expensive to make. But the premium you pay for a premade Thanksgiving like Costco is more about getting time back to spend with family, and for a lot of people an extra hundred bucks for that is probably worth it.