Shoppers make their way down the water aisle in City Market Aspen Tuesday afternoon. Store shelves continue to be slightly less stocked than usual due to supply chain shortages.
If they haven’t already, Thanksgiving shoppers should find most everything on their grocery store lists this year but should also expect higher prices and fewer options.
“There’s nothing that’s ... completely out. We can’t get Pepperidge Farm stuffing this time of year, but we have three other brands out there,” Trevor Moodie, Clark’s Market Aspen store director, said Tuesday. “It’s things like that, where we may not be able to get a typical brand that we usually carry — sometimes they’re having problems — but we've got alternatives to meet that market.”
Moodie estimated the price of turkey had increased slightly — by about 20 cents per pound — but that the cost of organic turkey went way up — in some cases by more than $2 per pound compared to last year.
Rossignol Aspen spreads out inventory on their shelves while waiting for new products to arrive. Normally, they would be fully stocked already for the holiday season, but because of supply-chain issues, as a result of the pandemic, inventory is a bit thin.
“Organic turkeys went through the roof … Their pricing went way up this year,” Moodie said. “For our retail price, you’re talking about people spending over one hundred dollars on a big [organic] turkey … They’re just not going to do it.”
The price of meat, especially red meat, has continued to climb over the last three to five months, Moodie said.
However, despite noticeable price increases, businesses still have plenty of traditional Thanksgiving meal items in stock, including turkeys.
According to Moodie, Clark’s Market still had more than 100 turkeys available as of Tuesday afternoon.
“We have plenty of canned pumpkin, we have plenty of cranberries — fresh and canned — we have the stuffing and gravy mixes. We’ve got turkeys coming out of our ears,” Moodie said. “We’re not going to run out.”
According to Moodie, Clark’s, like several other businesses, has struggled to hire employees, but with Aspen Skiing Co. announcing earlier this week that its 2021-22 winter season would begin on Thanksgiving, Moodie said he had already received more completed job applications.
“It’s been tough. It’s definitely been a struggle,” Moodie said. “With the mountain opening there’s a slight influx of new arrivals coming into town that are looking for jobs.”
A City Market spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment Tuesday.
Richard Raymond, who manages Aspen Hickory House, said the high cost of meat, coupled with Pitkin County’s indoor mask mandate, led the BBQ restaurant to cancel its historically free Thanksgiving meal.
“We just feel that not as many people would show up and enjoy the food with the mask mandate in place,” Raymond said. “Not a lot of people want to come in and take a bite of food and put a mask back on.”
According to Raymond, more than 100 people had enjoyed the free holiday meal in years past and he had fielded several phone calls from people sorry to hear of its cancellation.
“The prices have just gone through the roof on everything … Where a chicken wing used to be fifty cents, now it’s a dollar twenty five a wing,” Raymond said. “Everything’s more expensive.”
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November 24, 2021 at 05:00PM
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Rising prices, short supplies felt during Thanksgiving shopping - Aspen Daily News
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